


Satan's Secret Association for Important Demons

by kingleedo



Category: ONEUS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Archdemon!Gunhak, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Blood and Gore, Disturbing Themes, Drug Use, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Hell, M/M, Smut, Violence, kinda polyamorous at times
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2020-07-19 23:20:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19982215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingleedo/pseuds/kingleedo
Summary: In Hell, you suffer just to suffer. But every now and then, you meet an arch demon that comes and saves you, even if you thought he’d hurt you like everything else.//in which Dongju is broken by Hell and can’t trust a man who only cares about his own pleasures.





	1. Pretty

**Author's Note:**

> REWRITING! Sorry to start back at chapter 1!!!! BUT I think yall will be happier bc the first version suCKs. Thank you so so much for reading, I appreciate every single one of you with all of my whole entire heart <3

Dongju was all alone when he came to.

It was an empty room, absent of all but him, where the walls met each other at their ends and boxed him in, where they were deeply darkened by a black blood dripping down their bodies. Where they hung over and watched him who was in a spotlight of dim yellow like he was to be judged for a crime. His body was bare, the cold of the ground grasping at his flesh, and the walls judged him, towering high in the shadows where that dim light didn’t quite reach.

He took a breath. A shiver ran through him, and there was a heavy weight pulling down on his soul; a cold hand grabbed at his heart, pulled it toward the cold floor from where he was hesitant to rise.

He had done something awful. This much was clear to him. Though he knew naught of what he may have done, he felt it in his bones and in his organs, the tugging in his gut and the weight of the walls’ glaring above him. The weight was almost too powerful, for he felt that he should stay rooted to the ground for all of eternity, but he had not known for what he was there, and the inability to understand this surged him to sitting up.

It was by no accident that Son Dongju had risen here in this blackened box. He felt this; but he could not recall the grounds for which he was sent here. He raised carefully from the floor, and his tired eyes wafted about the room as he looked for something inside him, where his mind was held captive by images flashing of gruesome gore.

Fire. Glass. Blood.

It was like trying to remember a dream upon waking up. His mind clutched onto a vague impression of sorrow, of fear, and of emptiness, but he could not place it. He thought it made the most sense that he was _entering_ into a dream, not leaving one. The way the walls had no place in his memories but nonetheless had some vague impression of being not misplaced, of being rightful in its existence—the way a dream made no sense but made complete sense, this is what it felt like.

By the works of an urge brought about by his subconscious, he took his hand to his neck. The skin was smooth, but it shouldn’t have been, it should have been torn. This is what Dongju felt, not what he knew.

Of course, he must have been dreaming.

His eyes clicked onto the door in the center of the forward wall, and for a frozen moment, where the air stilled and the walls vanished into the shadows, the door beckoned his coming. There was no other way to take; he had no choice but forward. It was not a room of many doors where one called out to him over the others, like Fate summoning him to take his destined path. No, it was a single taunting and mocking door that commanded his body to enter through it.

And so Dongju walked on.

He nearly believed that the almighty door would jump at and seize him the moment he took hold of the knob, but it didn’t, and Dongju released a tense breath, wondered how he could have even thought such a thing. The door was heavy. It wailed as it opened, hinges grinding against each other’s metal, as if it was as ancient as the oldest millennia. He stopped short, desperate never to have the noise grind in his ears again, and slid through the opening. The wail sounded through the air once again, and the door collapsed with a resounding boom. At once, the world was still.

Dongju now stood in a hallway and at its end was an elevator. The only light in the room was rooted above it, another dim spotlight of sorts; it flickered irregularly, was accompanied by the buzz of fatigued filaments soon to go out. Once again, he was called forth—once again, he had to oblige to the demands of the door.

He proceeded with caution, wondering what the purpose was to have a door leading to another door, and his light step patted the ground. The sound of his bare feet against the hardwood was faint, but it rippled through the long corridor nonetheless. The air was in a deep sleep, and each move Dongju made disturbed its peace. It shuffled around him, slowly began coming out of this sleep. Dongju was scared to move as if the air was some all-powerful creature that if awakened would take him away from the sheltered bliss he was currently experiencing. It took courage for him to reach the elevator, and the thing had no button; it opened on its own.

Dongju stopped, heart beginning to tremble, pulled his arms close, and looked up at the elevator. What was beyond it? Where would it take him? He stood for a long while there at its doors, and the doors never shut. They waited for him. He looked over his shoulder, and there, the shadows waited. The black door was hidden in the darkness.

Without looking ahead, Dongju stepped into the opening, into the clutches of the elevator. The doors slid shut, descended without permission from its rider. Dongju stayed with his back toward the doors for a moment, heart prickling. Eventually, he turned forward. His petite and naked frame stood looking back at him, and after meeting the reflected eyes, the silence became thick and suffocated him like a blanket in the summer heat.

The elevator doors clicked apart.

Screams, explosions, heat from all directions. A bullet waited not a second to rip up his throat.

It was deafening, a bomb exploding with a thunderous boom and forcing scalding wind and pebbles into his flesh. The screams, how drenched with agony and suffering they were, reverberated through his whole body—bones, muscles, organs, and all—as they echoed through the atmosphere and into the ground below him.

He slammed backwards into the wall out of terror, and he would have yelped had it not been for the hole in his throat; blood trickled down his flesh, choked him. His lungs jerked and twitched to retrieve oxygen but to no avail. Another bullet split past him, nicking his ear. He burst into action, gushed out the elevator. He let his feet take him somewhere—anywhere—through the torn city.

Collapsed buildings and debris bedecked the roads; boulders half Dongju’s size, splintered wood, glass, and more all littered the streets from past-buildings no longer standing—all black. Bullet shots split the air at each corner of the world, and crowds of people swarmed, ripping at each other’s throats, nearly literally. Agony was impressed into the environment. The standing buildings ascended high with avarice at its side, and the sky, the crimson sky, was an omnipotent being holding wide its arms in delight as it beheld the pandemonium below.

Everything blurred into each other, and blackness started painting Dongju’s vision. He shook when he bumped into someone. They were naked like him, but they weren’t scared, eyes frolicking with energy, and they reached for Dongju who was already jumping back, retreating for safety elsewhere.

Safety didn’t exist though. His eyes shot towards every object, be it an explosion, gun, or human being, lagging just enough that nothing was truly processing within.

Dongju raced away. He raced against the insecurity around him, against the harm, trying to beat it before it could beat him. He raced from the noises and the sights, through the alleys and the backroads, until the density of danger finally dissipated. With his chest screaming in pain, he traversed the maze of roads, finding one dead end after another. He realized that the deadends were all south of the chaos, as if there was a wall that barred entry any further—the only way was through the havoc.

He grimaced at the realization, unready to head back in. He walked slow, gripped at his neck. He couldn’t breathe and hadn’t done so for more than three minutes. Why wasn’t he dead? His heart was convulsing, its pounding distinct in his ears, and he yearned for an escape from all the noise, but if he covered his ears to avoid the screams and gunshots, the pounding became all that there was, juicy in his eardrums, and that only reminded him of his bulging heart within and the throat that couldn’t retrieve oxygen.

He was drowning in air, but the end didn’t come—the pain didn’t stop.

The screams—Dongju was beginning to detect pleasure in them, not just pain. Over the sharp gunshots and the crackling of fires, the screaming sang out, a lullaby of death. Dongju headed in its direction. If there was a way out, it was toward it, not away. He was careful through the alleys, light on his step, skipping from toe to toe. He edged himself along the walls, steered clear of the masses, and went for the routes with as few people as possible. He was confident he’d make it out untouched.

But then, he turned a corner, and a hand hooked onto his throat.

It threw him to the ground. A rock slit his back, but he barely noticed as he was already scrambling up. The hand denied him footing, shoved him back down. A foot slammed onto him hard, snapped a rib, and pinned him to the concrete rubble.

It was a man. His muscles were massive, his length was long, and his beard was bushy. He was cleanly dressed in a leather jacket and boots, all black. He was double Dongju’s size, but that wasn’t the scariest part. Nor was the knife pointed at Dongju or the gun hanging around the man’s shoulder. It was his eyes that were so scary; they danced with greed, and the music was the chaos.

“What’s he worth?” he said, voice deep and resonant, and a woman squatted next to Dongju.

She took his leg, felt it up, observed it like an object to be sold, and Dongju tried pulling back, but she grabbed his leg with both hands, and she was strong. Dongju’s leg was hers to take.

Her touch was revolting like that of an abusive mother, and releasing one of her hand’s grip on him, she glazed her fingers up his skin towards—

Dongju clasped his legs shut, ripping his leg from her. A crackling came from him in an attempt to speak; he couldn’t though, not with the hole in his throat, not with the blood pooling up in his mouth. The man thrust his boot into him, and the broken rib dug into something it shouldn’t have. Dongju coughed, splattering red onto the man’s boots.

“Quit,” the woman said. “If you dirty him, we won’t get a good price.”

Wait, _was_ he an object to be sold?

Dongju shoved at the ankle, nearly triple the size of his own, as hard as he could, but it was firm in its place. It was a steel beam on him, and the man was the skyscraper, unreachable, towering over Dongju. Shoes clashed with the ground around him; people sprinted in all directions, chasing or escaping. Guns roared in the distance. There was a boom followed by hysterical laughter, and Dongju’s heart was surging within, urging him to find safety and tranquility, but he was trapped, naked and unprotected. The boot scratched at his flesh along with the concrete below, ripping up his minute pores. He looked up at the man, and suddenly, he was a bystander in his own battle, unable to do anything, as the man’s lips wrenched into a satisfactory smile. Behind him, the sky watched, and if there was a sun, it would have been laughing. The woman took his chin, pulled it towards her. She had crinkles between her brows and around her mouth. Gray strands of hair intertwined with youthful brown. Her jacket was clean with only minuscule tears in the thick cloth, her sturdy vest with many pockets, her thick turtleneck sweater under that, and her cargo pants dusty. She was dripping with sweat, reeked of body odor; no doubt was the outfit uncomfortable.

She smirked nonetheless, her discomfort obscured.

“Pretty… unable to defend himself… We should get a great price.”

She was assured with this belief, shoulders back, head high, drawing her hand away slowly as if Dongju couldn’t dare do anything about it. But he did. He clamped his teeth into her hand, and his heart jerked at the way her tendons ground against his teeth, and he pulled back before he could do any real harm.

“He bit me!” she yelped, retracting her hand quickly.

Enraged, the man reached for Dongju.

But something stole Dongju’s attention.

It was another man sprinting by, paying almost no attention, but then the man made eye contact with Dongju, and his eyes widened, went ablaze, and in no time at all, he pulled a gun out and shot at the base of the duo’s necks; they dropped to the ground, paralyzed, and the man ripped Dongju off the ground, roped him around the neck, and took off. His gunpoint popped in every direction, making sure no one could shoot him before he did them.

“Oh, how lucky I decided to come to Block 1 today,” he muttered, voice calm and steady.

Dongju dug his heels into the ground, hacking out a sound of defiance. The man hauled him hard, sent Dongju tripping over his feet. Dongju’s chin hooked over the arm, and he hung by his neck. The man continued his trek, and Dongju’s toes dragged against the concrete. Air crackled in his throat, but the man spared no sympathy, keeping his pace fast. Dongju caught his footing, but he didn’t stop the attempts to speak. He hacked at the man, tugged back, tried anything to escape, but to no avail.

He was thrown onto the ground of an empty alley. The man kicked at his kidneys—one, two, three. Dongju pulled at the ground, trying to escape. The man whipped his barrel at Dongju, eyes unfeeling.

Dongju knew he wouldn’t shoot. What the woman said about dirtying him up, that must have applied here, so he snarled his teeth, eyes piercing past the gun and at the man. The man reared back his gun, and Dongju was relieved, though he didn’t show it in his sharp glare.

The man smirked and in a flash, shot off Dongju’s index finger. Pain rummaged through Dongju, who took his hand to his chest and guarded it. He started gagging, cackling, and suddenly he was wondering why he hadn’t woken up yet. What kind of nightmare was this anyway, and why was he having it?

The man laughed, but his words came out cold.

“You don’t need a finger to be fucked.”

Dongju wrenched his expression. _What?_ He shot his attention up, eyebrows furrowed in awe and disgust.

The man whistled, clicked his tongue.

“Poor baby,” he said, Dongju’s heart convulsing for a reason other than suffocation. “You’re too pretty for your own good, especially with the way you’re looking at me right now. So hurt, so betrayed.”

Before Dongju could react, he was ripped from the ground.

“You’ll be a good toy,” the man said.

He was taken fast through the alley, and he didn’t fight. He just started wiping at his face, hoping to get that feeling of shit off it. Was this happening because he was…

No, no. What? What was he even saying? He was dreaming after all. All he had to do was wait until he woke up, but that thought wasn’t working well to quell the nausea building in his stomach.

His surroundings passed by in a blur, his mind raced, and before he knew it, they were in a wide street. The man tightened his grip and ran faster to escape the mass of inhabitants, but then a gunshot rang out, and he froze, fell down. Dongju jumped, choked, and a woman yelled.

“That boy is mine!” she yelled.

Dongju glanced up, searched for the owner of the voice. Others were glancing up too, and the fighting dwindled for just a moment, everyone’s views rooted backward, but in a beat, their attention shot forward. Dongju stood alone, and now, dozens of eyes were on him.

Suddenly, it was Dongju versus an entire crowd of starving beasts; they sat watching each other, hushed. It was the calm before the storm.

A grenade broke the silence, crashed into the ground, and the storm began. Flames erupted, sending sizzling sparks and a scorching wave of heat into Dongju. The flames latched onto nearby bodies and engulfed flesh and bone, and they looked like rabid ghosts of orange, chasing after its victims only to bring pain.

A woman sprinted around the flames, untouched, and yelled out.

“I said _Mine_.” 

Dongju started then, took off into a sprint, yearned for an escape. Some shot at his ankles, striving for him to fall, and he hopped around as he ran, dodging the bullets. He missed the number of times he came down onto sharp pebbles, and he paid careful attention not to send a lost nail up his foot. The woman was gaining on him fast, and he still couldn’t breathe, and his finger was completely off, and what the living fuck was even happening to him right now?

He didn’t have time to process, to think—he could only run. That was it.

And so he did just that, except when he heard a gunshot go off a bit too close, and then he’d jump.

The woman caught him, ripped an arm around him, but the next moment, a gun was to her head, and her brain was splattered on the next building over. And then a man was after Dongju, but then a man was after _that_ man.

They seized each other, slammed fists into each other, and Dongju sprinted down a street. He kept going, past the fights, past the rubble, past the screams, and past the flames. The sky bled, and the atmosphere sunk, where the grounds reached up and wrenched it downward. Dongju felt the weight from above and below crushing him, and though he tried to escape, no matter where he went, the sky was still red and the streets were still black. He was trapped.

He squeezed out of a street as he came upon a black sward. The grass seemed to ripple across the lands upon his entrance, as if it was some grand moment, and for him, it was. Mid-step, before he could feel the plush of the grass under his feet, someone tackled him. A fist split into his face.

“Pretty boy!” the man screamed, climbing atop him.

Dongju blocked the oncoming assaults, hiding his face behind his forearms. He grimaced and twisted his expression with each hit, cringing and yanking away, and he wasn’t getting a good glimpse of the man behind his arms and constant flinches, but he got the obvious: the man’s rugged face, ancient, wrinkled, with a big crooked nose and thin cracked lips. Trashed beard, torn clothes. Rotten, rotten teeth.

“You pretty sluts,” he growled, animalistic. He wrested Dongju’s wrists, pulled him close so that he had no choice but to meet the man in the eye. “How fucking lucky of you to be born with worth.”

He knocked Dongju into the ground and brought him back up.

“I’ll take that worth away from you right now.”

Spit flew from his lips; his eyes were deranged, gone too far by miles. If he’d growled any bit harsher, he’d have sounded just like a beast guarding its food.

The man grabbed his belt, and Dongju became rabid. Eyes wide, throat twisted, he pounded his hands onto the man, over and over. He hacked, tried to get out words, tried over and over to deny the man, but to no avail… to no avail.

_Wake up, wake up. Wake up!_

The man shoved down his pants just enough to uncover himself, and Dongju shut his eyes. He couldn’t fight, he couldn’t even fucking scream to get out his terror. All he could do was look away and throw his fists at the man.

Sharp metal pierced into Dongju’s gut; a cackle came from him, rolled across his tongue accompanied by blood. He looked—a knife. It was retracted then reentered, not once, not twice. Three times, and his organs ruptured in places he didn’t know held organs.

“Stop moving, slut!” the man raged.

Dongju didn’t have to listen; the nausea grew so potent that he couldn’t work his limbs properly, and his head dropped back. The vomit pushed up the hole in his throat. He spasmed and retched at the image of his organs spilling into one another.

The man’s hands gripped his hips, set them up.

His hands. They were so big on Dongju’s small frame. So big and so dry. Violating, revolting.

“If someone like me, someone ugly and poor, can hurt someone like you, beautiful and destined to be fed as long as he gives his body,” he said, “then who really has it worse?”

He laughed, and Dongju wished that his ears would burst. He already couldn’t speak or smell; he could close his eyes if he needed, but his ears, they were doing fine. They heard the man’s sickening screech of a laugh perfectly fine.

Weren’t there people chasing Dongju, fighting over him? Where were they now? Why didn’t they kill the man above him?

“People like you deserve to feel pain—”

And that’s when a bullet cracked into his skull and blood expectorated out of it. The body toppled over, and Dongju lay unmoving, processing slowly.

People like him... 

He _deserved_ to feel this way?

“Fucking idiot,” came a woman. “If you’re so poor, maybe sell the thing and not try to fuck it.”

Was he a ‘thing,’ was Dongju just a _thing_?

“Christ, don’t even bother with him,” went another. “ _You_ saw how many people went after him and got fucking obliterated.”

Two women came into Dongju’s vision. They pushed the body off him, scanned him, and grimaced.

“He’s not _that_ pretty,” one said, and they walked off, leaving Dongju’s teensy-tiny body to rot in the dirt.

Dongju looked over. He saw a rose, deep red, crushed into the black grass, barely breathing.

He brought his eyes up, and his body was a dead weight under the blood of the sky turning black as the daylight faded into night. A tear trickled down his cheek; the warm liquid graced down it, splashed onto a blade of grass, and absorbed into the soil, gone to become apart of the water cycle once again.

The vicious roaring around him managed to get him up, but the moment he stood, a ten-foot-thick wall of flames flourished right in front of him out of nowhere. Across the flames, twenty feet far, stood a man.

He glowed in the fire’s luminance, and his arms were held out to his sides, magnificent and grandiose. His right arm fell ever-so-slowly back down to its rightful position, and he looked left. His eyes searched for something a moment then they froze. He tapped his index. A scream shattered across the air in response, and Dongju glanced in its direction. Someone was consumed by flames.

But surely it was just a coincidence. The man’s eyes searched, his finger tapped, and a scream and a flame consuming a body followed shortly. Dongju tensed. Surely, surely, he was just imagining things. As the man went for a third round, Dongju was alert and prepared, and he saw it, all of it.

The man was lighting people on fire.

Dongju stayed frozen, terrified of moving and attracting the man’s attention. His eyes were all that budged, and they beaded back and forth between the man and his next victims. Then, the man picked up his pace. He swung his arm, and there billowed a wall of flame capturing any soul in its path, and he brought up both hands next, raised them high, and doused an explosion on the biggest batch of beings in the vicinity. Dongju watched, horrified, and that’s when he caught the most repulsive part of all. Pure, ripe pleasure scorched on the man’s lips, on his smile.

He lowered his arm and observed the mayhem befall him. He stood straight, and his head was held high. He was proud. Then, he turned his head back, and his eyes met Dongju’s.

They were horrifying, somehow frozen and blazing at the same time. Shadows danced along his features as the flames flickered between them, obscuring his true structure in the darkness of the night.

His lip curled a bit more.

Dongju dropped, clambered backward, shaking his head.

No more, no more.

No more of the atmosphere poisoning the fields, no more of the blood spilling down the horizon, no more of the buildings towering above him.

_Please_.

As Dongju scrambled further and further away, the man walked forth. Dongju smacked into a wall, but the man entered the fire, sundering a path for his entry to the other side. The flames whipped back and forth, tore at its surroundings, raged on and on, and consumed all in its way. That was everything, but the man. The flames bowed down to him; their light caressed his lush complexion, glimmered upon his earrings, shined against his vibrant black-hair. Then they were behind him, and all Dongju could do was wait for him to come. His tears stung, his gut screamed, and he made it clear on his face that he was suffering.

He was staring down when the shoes came into view, and the man squatted, draped his arms over his thighs, and watched. Dongju remained still, which made the man tip up his chin with that index finger of his, and he flinched.

“Sweetheart,” he said, venom dripping from his palate. “Look at me.”

Dongju remembered the flames and he remembered how the man had sparked them himself. He looked up.

The man was amused; his smile irradiated toxic gratification, branding itself into the environment. It was suffocating, a lethal gas concentrated in every atom, inescapable, and even with all his virulence, he was beyond beautiful. Sharp, piercing eyes somehow soft and playful, lips plump and hydrated. He wore nothing in defense—an outfit of dress pants and shoes and a loose silk blouse which cut down into a ‘V’ and hinted at how sculpted his body was. His fingers were adorned with prodigious rings, and from his ear there hung a chained earring, which fell upon his jaw as he tilted his head at Dongju. He graced his delicate touch across Dongju’s cheek. Dongju grimaced.

His arms, strong and powerful, settled back onto his thighs. His pants stretched tight on his legs too muscular. The fires crackled and bellowed behind him, and the shadows blanketed his features in a sinister way, but through it, his eyes dazzled from the light gone astray.

“So obedient,” he said. “I like my toys like that.”

Dongju twisted his face at that. The man snickered at him.

“Especially when they make those kinds of faces.”

And then his hand was back on Dongju’s cheek, stroking it as if it was his to stroke. Dongju pulled away, and disappointed, the man clicked his tongue, scrunched his nose.

“Oh, I like them a bit less when they do that,” he confessed. “But it makes me want to train you even harder, I admit.” He looked Dongju up and down for a quick second then took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you what. Because you’re new here, I’ll help you out, and maybe in a few years if I come across you, you can repay your debt. By then, you’ll surely know your place and how lucky you’d be to submit to me.”

He lifted Dongju’s chin high, and his neck pulled at just the right angle to disturb the bullet in him; he started coughing. The man brought his finger to the neck, but he didn’t touch it. Dongju couldn’t see what he tried because the hand was obscured by his chin, but he felt the cold metal in him moving. It grated against his veins and muscles and the next moment was pulled right out of him. Surprised, he brought his head down quickly to see, and the man was holding the bullet between his thumb and index. Except the bullet was floating. He didn’t physically touch it. He flicked it away, and it shot into the ground fast, almost as if a gun had shot it.

“That’s why you’re not talking… Not that I would want you to anyway, so if I do this for you, keep quiet, would you?”

His hand came near Dongju’s neck, and instantly, the pain started dissipating. Dongju knew it was being healed, and soon, he was breathing. Then the man hovered his hand above Dongju’s torn gut and then his missing finger, and those became healed too.

“That feel nice, sweetheart?” he said, and his eyes waved down his work—Dongju’s body—taking in all his creation.

His finger slid down Dongju’s abdomen, slow as if to take in every fiber in his flesh.

“Or should I call you baby?”

His eyes popped back up, strong, and power burned in them, kindled on his amused lips.

Dongju grew cold, his limbs becoming leaden ice. His bare body was on display for the whole world to see, touch— _taste_ if they imagined hard enough. He wanted to run—hide.

Run from the ghastly bellows fuming in the distance, hide from the rapacious beasts out to violate him. He wanted to disappear, he wanted to wake up, but he couldn’t figure out how to. The air grew heavy, contained him like a straight jacket, and he was powerless, unable to fight Fate that condemned him here so unjustly.

And the man, he was all of it combined. Dongju would rather bury himself underground than see him ever again.

The blackened sky watched behind the man, soft and humble, and the man ignored its presence. He was relaxed, and he enjoyed his time propped up in front of Dongju.

“Do me a favor. Stay clean, so I can dirty you myself, okay?”

The man finally removed his eyes from Dongju. He looked up and searched for something, and as he did, Dongju sat idle, watching him, hoping that he was growing bored. After a moment, the man flicked his hand, and some clothes appeared. He plopped them onto Dongju and raised three fingers.

“Three rules for your survival: cover your face, be selfish, and be strong. Got that?”

He stood after that, saying barely audibly, “Seoho. Let’s go home.”

Dongju shook as a blonde man flashed into existence next to him but spared no room for surprise after everything he’d already witnessed. The blonde held a severed head by its hair, and blood dripped out of its vacant neck.

“So soon?” said the blonde with a bright smile, and the black-haired was walking off already.

“I need a tension release.”

“I can help with that.”

“Keep trying, baby.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the blonde went and chucked the head far.

It flew across the fields and crashed into the ground—fractured into a million pieces.

They were too far to hear now. Dongju was lost, confused. He just wanted to know where he was, and they knew, but he was too frozen to speak up.

But of course, he didn’t have to ask. It was just a dream, and all he needed now was to wait. Wait to wake up engulfed by his fluffy blankets, wait until the light chimes of his alarm brought him from this abyss.

A breeze scraped at his skin. It was dry and grating, not light and smooth. The fire was boiling as it whipped—not flickered—around, and he sat in the grass like he did on his favorite spring days, but it wasn’t the same.

Dongju waited.

He waited for this world to vanish and for his to return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want any confusion surrounding how Dongju got to Hell: it has nothing to do with his being gay because fuck that homophobic shit :)


	2. A New World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhh this is NOT 19,700 words of world-building what do you mean uh--but it is 46 pages ;)) 
> 
> I AM SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT! its a long story, but truly n honestly im thankful for you all. i hope the word count makes up for it. I love each and every single one of your comments so so much; they are so so lovely and I love reading them.

The darker the black, the more light absorbed.

The night sky at that moment was by far the darkest thing Dongju’d ever seen. He lay on the bed of a forest, watching it and all of its soullessness. Everything that ever did gleam was consumed in its endless boundaries, an abyss stretching long and deep, eternally black, far into nothingness—inescapable; its presence was immense, and it felt like one great untouchable being spectating in the gladiator's arena, taking pleasure in the pain that dispersed below.

It could only be compared to a father, terrifying and abusive, with eyes that narrowed and a smile that wrenched, watching his kid quiver before him. Why did Dongju think of the man from a few hours ago when he saw the sky? The sky was great and terrifying, as were the man’s eyes when they met Dongju’s across the flames.

Dongju fled from there shortly after the shock and terror wore off. Now all that was left was an icy sinking in his gut, his body realizing the potential permanence of his being here.

He ran and ran until he couldn’t anymore, when he finally crashed onto the ground. The hole from when he dug soil to slather on his face sat by him, his only accompaniment in this dark night, and he lay watching, cold because the ice in his gut, yearning for a blanket. Him and this empty pit, the only thing to aid him in figuring out where he was.

It felt too real to be a dream, and something rooted inside convinced him it definitely wasn’t. Intuition, but why? Why did it tell him this was reality? Reality wasn’t coated with an eternal blackness. It felt so real, the way the world was already on its way to oppressing him and his thoughts. He didn’t have the optimism of thinking he’d escape or wake up; it already felt permanent.

And that’s what scared Dongju the most.

Dongju lay in the center of a sward of trees, and they towered high, an invulnerable wall. The forest was still and calm, tranquil leaves waving in the occasional wind, but despite this soothing impression, Dongju felt vulnerable and watched, as if the idleness was a way to observe secretly and betray later. Dongju was an execrated outsider not welcome.

Under the eyes of the sky, Dongju gripped the shirt he wore, his breath slow and worn, and thought about what the man said, about how Dongju would repay him someday. These clothes, nothing but some worn pants and a long-sleeved shirt, were a symbol of that. They would hang on him forever, even when he wore them no longer.

He soon slept, and there was nothing but black inside his dreams, and when something brought him from the bliss, he still only saw black. He didn’t awake in his bed under a soft blanket rather he did to empty air and a branch sticking him in the side.

A scream came from the distance, and his heart surged him up. He squatted and leaned on his fingers, ready to run if needed. His eyes locked on a woman through the trees.

She was quaint, dainty, with little wrists and a tiny waist. Long black hair, silky and radiant in the moonlight’s caress. Glowing skin, round eyes, plump lips. She was beautiful, and she was running fast, thin legs dancing down the dirt and leaves. She screamed; on and on she went. Her screams were helpless, sharp shrieks shattering through the forest. A man chased her. He was burly, with great muscles and a sharp jaw. He was fast, faster than the girl, and he grabbed her wrist and somehow it didn’t snap under his magnificent strength. He yanked her around, her body nothing but an easy playtoy, and threw her down. He overpowered her quickly.

She was weak. He was strong.

He yelled at her, calling her a slut for manipulating him. She fought for freedom. Her screams ran past the bark of the trees and along the weeds of the ground, met Dongju, and enveloped him in a frightened grasp. They grabbed ahold of his heart, yanking it downward, and tears then burned his eyes. He tore his view from the scene and grew still, body and mind, as he stared at the ground. The dirt was a blur, unprocessed by his shocked mind, but the screams were processing, and they echoed in his skull.

What could he do?

The man went on about her manipulation of him, about how silly a woman she was for thinking she could outsmart those in the mantle and how they’d always know. He told her that if she wanted to use her body so badly—

Dongju’s stomach twisted, and he bit down to keep the urge of vomiting back.

“Help me!” the girl screamed, cries flooding the atmosphere. “Somebody help me!”

What could he do?

 _Help her_.

Dongju heard her wishes, but he was quaint and dainty, with little wrists and a tiny waist. He could do nothing.

Heart breaking, he ripped himself from the ground and rushed away, leaving the girl behind to receive the man and his wrath. Her screams faded into muffled cries, and he begged for his ears to stop hearing like his eyes had stopped seeing. He ran through the blur of trees, each heavy and towering over him, almost an entity of evil on their own. He barely felt the rocks, twigs, and mildew that scraped and squished under his bare feet.

It took a long while before her cries vanished, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he went far enough or that the girl just gave up and grew silent. He was choking by the time he stopped, choking on air and choking back tears. Heaving from fatigue and anxiety, he felt like he was suffocating, and as he leaned his hands on his knees, her cries returned to his mind. He couldn’t escape them; they rang in his ears, and he shook his head, shook it again when they didn’t leave, and still, they didn’t leave. He stood up straight, head heavy and hanging to the side, and ahead, what he hadn’t realized in the blur before, was a field. Behind the shadowed trees was a sward of obsidian grass, each black strand bedewed with a bead of water and a sparkle of moonlight kissed onto each drop.

But the drops seemed closer to poison than water.

The open expanse was too empty. Entering it, he’d be an instant target no doubt, so he turned away, but he felt worse turning away, realizing that even the sheltered landscape of the forest felt open, that the only two choices he had made him cold and left his sleeved arms bare.

Tired, he found a spot where the bushes and grass were thick and lay onto a bed of moss. He huddled close to the slight security the bush provided, curled into the tightest fetal position he’d ever curled, and shut his eyes.

He was scared. Obviously. But there was nothing else to think. All that was filling Dongju’s head was him falling asleep and someone coming to hurt him. He was so open; his bare feet curled over one another trying to find consolation or fearing vulnerability, and that comfort of a blanket everyone wants even when they’re safe, he wanted it times ten.

He wanted that feeling of safety back, but how was he supposed to get that and did it even exist anymore? 

The air tightened around him, restricted him. It was hard getting to sleep.

—

Sometime late the next day when the red of day was fading into the black of night, Dongju stepped onto barren roads. He stood loose and weary as he looked ahead. Etched in front of him was a torn neighborhood, half-demolished and houses resembling something like 20s architecture.

There was no one around, but Dongju felt apprehensive despite. Before continuing, he had to find the knot of optimism hidden within. His eyes were cautious, creeping around the chipped wood of used-to-be homes as he traipsed around, and he clung close to the remaining upright walls. He kept his nose turned away from the mold spreading up the backs of them.

He went deeper into the black village, exploring its mysterious depths, and even though it didn’t look too different from the old villages he’d seen in history class, it felt different. The withered door he passed hung angrily, and the plant pot ahead was slung into a corner next to some steps, broken and abused, never to stand high again. In looking around, he accidentally nudged something with his foot. It was a bowl, and it was crooked on a wall, empty.

Everything felt like a pointed monument, rich with history and no matter the size, large enough to attract attention. Dongju walked on his toes and watched with vigil, and his fear distorted the lifeless monuments into something that watched too, where the bowl he’d long since passed knew of his every move and the door told him off to the nearest marauder. There was something frightening about the way everything seemed, like the forest, quiet as it observed but loud as it betrayed.

The shadows didn’t help as they morphed objects. After ten minutes of creeping around the smashed houses, his heart was beating fast, and he was clenching his fists over and over to calm his nerves. He felt eyes watching him in the shadows, like someone knew he was there.

A loud bang shot out from behind him. Heart wrenching, he twisted around. A wood panel had fallen.

The afterschock left him feeling stupid and uncomfortable. He put his hands to his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Nothing had even happened yet; what was he so scared for? It was his own head doing this to him, and he hoped it’d quit, but as he moved on some more, he was still uneasy.

Soon, the broken down houses were being replaced by full houses. Run-down and like shacks maybe, but whole and complete nonetheless.

In search for safety and hoping he’d find something in the house ahead, Dongju crept open a gate. It wailed out in the endless silence, and Dongju pulled back and glanced around. Nobody was there, so he wedged himself in the small crevice and walked the little dirt path up to the front door. It creaked, but it was nothing like the cry of the gate.

Inside was a home—or one at one point in time—but it didn’t feel like one. Cobwebs and mildew was littered across the dry planking, and dirt pricked at his feet as he went looking around. 

He stepped past the broken table in the room. Down the hallway on the right, he poked his head into rooms. He found ratted fabric in one room that he lifted to see if anything worthy was hidden under. He saw a fractured teacup at which he stared for too long just to end up turning away. There was a piece of glass in the bathroom that he barely noticed. He wandered off into the last unchecked room, and when there was nothing, he slid down a wall.

He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He felt so small. Just a boy in the boundaries of a decaying home. His stomach growled, and his tongue was dry, and he had nothing. He had to keep moving, but feeling like a scared child without his parents, he was reluctant to move.

He felt so small.

A noise came through the crack in the door. Dongju looked up sharp. He stared through the sliver into the hallway and stilled. He waited, and the air waited with him, silent and tense.

A creak.

Was it the front door?

Dongju stayed still, scared to make a noise and hoping it was just his head. But at the third sound, he raised himself from the floor, slowly and carefully as he was unsure of what to do. His nervous eyes stilled on the door.

He flattened himself on the wall next to the door and peeked through the crack to the outside hallway. He waited until he was sure what he’d heard wasn’t his imagination. His skin was crawling, the air was on edge, and he pleaded that he was just crazy.

A figure passed through the hallway’s entrance, quickly entering a room.

Dongju sucked in a breath, felt like a million insects ran up his flesh. To ensure he wasn’t seen, he moved away from the crack. He placed his ear on the door to and heard footsteps trickle across the floor into the next room, the bathroom he remembered.

What was he going to do? He was at the end of the hallway, and the only way out was past the intruder. If he ran now, he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the hallway before they did. The only thing he could do was wait on them to get in the room left of him and then run. But as the figure came closer, Dongju grew more frightened. The closer they got, the realer it became that he was in danger.

They slipped into the room over, and Dongju ran. His feet hit the ground hard compared to the silence, and there behind him, as expected, were the other’s steps too but surprisingly much weaker on the step.

If he hadn’t touched the gate! Then they wouldn’t have heard him! Oh, and maybe if he’d closed it, he would’ve heard them coming sooner. He was so stupid!

As Dongju raced for the door, something came smashing into his head, and it left a ripe aching. It was the teacup, now lying on the floor in two. Then, though Dongju didn’t see, just heard, the attacker dove for his ankle. He slammed on the ground, head banging on its wood. For a moment, everything started ringing, and his vision blurred; when it returned, a glass shard came at him fast. He threw his hand, and wrist met wrist. The glass stopped an inch from his eye. Dongju’s breath hitched in his throat, and a mutilated squeak cracked out from him. Luckily, they were thin and feeble, or his eye would have already been split. He shoved against the attacker. 

They were crazed and deranged, and they madly reached for Dongju over and over as he tried shoving them off. Something about the way they moved, Dongju couldn’t keep up with. It was like they were an animal with rabies, growling and everything.

The glass ran a chunk of skin off Dongju’s arm, and it burned. The attacker grabbed at the skin like it was a prize and shoved it into their pants’ pocket. Dongju yelled out in disgust, cringing aggressively.

He blocked the next swing, and with the way their arm was shaking aggressively, he finally got what was happening: they were trying to eat him; they were starving.

In a burst of revolt and terror, Dongju slung the attacker off him, wrested the glass, and took off out the door. He shot through the gate and ran hard. His attacker was following, howling. Dongju just kept running, and they just kept following. They were slower than him from malnutrition; maybe he could run them dry. But then he would be run dry. He was already hungry and thirsty, and running was going to make it ten times worse.

It occurred to him there was only one other thing to do: fight.

It would be easy enough, given the size of the other, but... fight? Dongju, the soft passive boy who could never hurt anyone for real, was now supposed to attack someone? 

He heard a thud behind him. He glanced back. They’d fallen to the ground, and without hesitation, Dongju skidded to a halt. Breathing heavily, he thanked whatever there was to thank because his innocence was preserved another day.

He looked down at the glass, the piece from the bathroom, and swallowed a sour taste down. He was an idiot; that was what he was sure of.

He looked up after a moment of bitter reflection and continued on to find something. Anything.

—

He’d been walking about an hour, and people were becoming more common; thrown across the streets were lumped over bodies, some crooked in corners, others sprawled on the ground. Dongju noted that they weren’t quite gone yet, which was evident from their eyes wafting half-absently to the passing human, some envious of the health he displayed. Dongju felt for them. It was the very least he could do, but given the circumstances, it was also the very most he could do without endangering himself. Maybe just walking here was dangerous, but he didn’t know what else to do. His throat was parched, and he couldn’t stop smelling pork in the air despite there being quite obviously nothing to eat. He had to find something somewhere, and all he knew to do was to keep walking.

It was as if the world had forced him here to play a game all for its entertainment, and though he held hope in his ability to learn its mechanics, the starving people under slanted lampposts and lopsided benches said otherwise. He would keep walking though, and that may’ve been the most sinister part of it all.

His new acquaintance Hunger bit at him some more. He’d never felt so truly hungry before, or so insecure. The streets were barren. Where was he to find food? If he was home— The ache of hunger twisted into a sharp pining, and he shoved that image right out of his head fast. Thinking that just made his heart beg for something he wasn’t allowed to have.

 _Stop, Dongju,_ he told himself, but the emotion already found its way in. He fought the tears pressing for release, and the pressure of a headache built inside his skull, either from dehydration or the fight.

Dongju forced his thoughts elsewhere as he kept on. He saw the grass. It looked like ash, where the rich black had been sucked away. He pulled himself through a jagged break in the wall around the neighborhood, concrete crumbled around it, and passed through some trees into a market square. Limp selling-stands lined a forgotten street, where old shop buildings hibernated in hazy shadows behind them, and maybe at one point, they were filled with fruits and beef but now only dirt. He strolled his finger down the length of one, scattered bits getting caught in the ridges of the wood. He stopped and brought his finger to his attention. He took his time watching it, but for no real purpose, then he kept walking some more.

There was a squishing noise coming from around the corner of a building ahead, and he wasn’t sure how to put it. It sounded somewhat like slime or maybe some jello being kneaded. His stomach churned hungrily thinking about jello; in any other world, he would’ve given a groan of irritation. He made sure to be soft on his step as he passed, in case it was dangerous, but as he saw the mutilated carcass being dug into, the attempt was thrown away as he sucked in a terrified breath.

The man over the carcass shot his eyes at Dongju. His hands were bloodied, and his right held what could have been thigh meat. Its juices ran down his thin lips.

Dongju stepped back horrified, and his hands were raised in front of his chest. The way he scrunched his body from fear gave him the impression of a lost kitten in front of a pitbull, and he took another step backward.

The man, he was skinny and feeble and had a bent nose hooked right on his dreary face.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” he said. “You’ll never have to end up like me.”

He looked away, continuing his feast of human. Processing it was slow; Dongju took a moment to start back up and move on. He turned away, face curling in confusion, and walked on slowly. The urge of vomit is what finally shook him, and he sprinted out of the market square. Up ahead were some woods; he went that way.

Legs loose and wobbly, his feet caught one another, and he hit the ground. Vomit burned up his throat and splashed on the ground. He threw himself right back up and ran for the protection of the trees, but when he finally made it, he was still naked to a predator’s vigil. 

“Mind over matter, Dongju…” he said under his breath. “Mind over matter.”

He found a pond thirty minutes later, and he collapsed at its feet. He scooped water up and drank it down. It was grimy, but he went back for more until his stomach was soon to burst. He scrubbed his tongue on his upper teeth to scrape the chalky dirt taste off it, his eyes narrowed in disgust. It was slow to leave.

He found his eyes in the reflection; they seemed hurt. Most of the mud had chipped off, its remnants nothing more than a fine cocoa powder, and it was easy to tell what he looked like. He grimaced, watching a bit of water drip down his chin and ripple into the water below.

He got up and walked on.

A day later, the forest left him, and he was forced onto an open path. The grass was short, prickly needles spread thin, and rocks poked as his feet at every moment. He didn’t have the luxury of looking down and dodging them as he had to keep his eyes up. The area was humongous, and the only hope of escaping was the line of mountains drawn on the horizon.

Sleeping that night was by far the most lonely thing to experience. He swept the rocks out of a small area and curled up. He started with his arm under his head but it’d eventually gone tingly so he moved it out and left his head hanging over his shoulder. His neck would’ve done better had he gotten on his back, but just the thought of it chilled his limbs and churned his gut. He chose a crooked neck over cold arms.

Walking the next day, he was back to being unfathomably thirsty, and his hunger was fluctuating, vanishing at times just to come back stronger than ever at others. He wandered on, never losing that feeling of eyes on him, and finally he spotted a rotting cottage that felt more like a small hut a bit of ways away but close enough to spark some motivation.

He saw a poorly-built bridge crossing over a miniature ravine and skipped up to it, too tired to run but too excited not to. It held water, and a moment of ease shifted through him; he didn’t have to wait another day, and that was truly a blessing. He hopped down into the shallow water and cupped some into his mouth. The faint current streamed around his ankles, and he couldn’t help but take a moment and let it run through his fingers too.

Something got caught by his ankle, and he looked over, fingers still threading the silk of the water. It was an ear. He jumped away, caught himself when he almost fell in. Hands propping himself up, he watched the ear continue on its path, and he tried not to think about what sat in his stomach right now.

He pulled himself out, shook the water off his hands, and started a step. A gunshot rang out. He finished his step, and the bullet ripped through the side of his neck. Had he not been moving already, it would’ve gone through it.

He split into action and started running. The cottages weren’t that far away. He sprinted as fast as he could, jumping and stopping and jerking at each gunshot. A bullet whizzed past his knees, another shot through his shoulder. His legs were quick to wobble, and he wasn’t going very fast. That was what it meant to not eat in four days.

He was heading toward a house, and he gave his last spurt of energy to shoot behind it. Before he did, a bullet ruptured one of his organs, and he collapsed and pulled himself the rest of the way, tremoring. He rested his head on the wood behind him, hacking up a mixture of blood and other bodily fluids. It was warm and thick, almost gooey to the point of it feeling like snot trapped in his throat no matter how often he tried coughing it out.

It was dark out, even in the day, where the sky bled atop impenetrable dark clouds. Light flooded the ground in a rectangle. Dongju looked up—a window.

Light?

_The houses weren’t empty._

A shadow passed through the light on the ground, and Dongju started. Legs trembling, he crept in the opposite direction, around the building, but got shot in the leg. He jolted back, and he was grabbed from behind, ripped back around the corner, and thrown onto his back. A foot rushed onto his abdomen hard, causing him to yell out from the guts pushing around in his wound. He looked up grimily, blood juicing down his chin, and there stood a man, his features an obscured silhouette against the ripened sky.

Saying nothing, the man took Dongju like he was a dog, and Dongju fought and struggled but pointlessly so. He had no strength, so he was dragged into the house mercilessly and tied up. His arms were tied under his thighs, and his ankles were tied together and around the bed frame’s foot. A sock was shoved into his mouth after he kept yelling, and duct tape forced it to stay. The damp cloth tasted of fetid onion. He didn’t stop making random noises though, and it only encouraged more of it. He threw a fit, pulling at his ankles to shake the brittle bed frame tucked in the corner of the small single-roomed home.

He stopped when the man swung his fist into his skull and his head whipped into one of the poles of the frame, a metallic ding ringing out.

After an hour, he calmed down as much as he could. Anger sizzled inside, and his brain screamed as the headache pulsed through it. Every slow beat his heart took was powerful, throbbing more pressure up in his head. The man didn’t say a word, just lay on his squeaky bed. It shook under him, and anytime Dongju managed to fall asleep that night, the man moved would just surge him awake, all his efforts wasted. It was hard to sleep in that position, and every disturbance made him increasingly more irate. In this hunched position, he felt the bullet more noticeably, like something caught in his throat but swimming in his organs instead.

He couldn’t escape the trapped ball he was forced into. All he could do was look at the same room for hours on end. The bed in a corner with mattress stains, the friable kitchen in the opposite corner with nothing more than a clunky stove, a trash bin, and a corroded refrigerator. Back and forth between them. To the rust that chipped up the bed frame. Especially the latter. His nose was only a few inches away, of course.

The next day, he was untied and lifted. His legs felt like waking up in the morning and clenching your hands in a fist, only worse, and he could barely stand. Blood still drained from him, making his vision darker than it should’ve been. The man took him to piss outside. He looked away, and Dongju, with his hands still tied, somehow managed to get his pants down far enough and up again. As he was taken back inside, he nearly dropped to the ground. He was breathing heavily by the time he was tied back up. The fatigue was tremendous.

He set his forehead on his knees and let loose his body. He wanted to conserve as much energy as he could. His neck strained and the pull stretched all the way down his back. His chin pressed up against his chest where his mouth was stuffed full and couldn’t be closed; every breath he took, the bullet moved. The sock was still damp, but no more damp as when it was first shoved in due to Dongju’s dehydration. It was almost scratchy on his packed-down tongue.

The refrigerator opened, what Dongju guessed. Eggs were cracked—one, two, three—and were sizzling all in a moment. Dongju jerked up, started tugging aggressively for release. The sock moistened. The man looked back and Dongju pleaded vigorously with his eyes. He would’ve cried if he had tears, and he wished he could’ve because all that was left was a yearning urge to do so.

“You want them raw?” the man said. Dongju quieted down. “Didn’t think so.”

But that meant Dongju would have food soon. He quietly squirmed with excitement.

The man brought the pan over when he was done. It was a cheap aluminum one misshapen from overuse, and the spoon was stained. He set it down, and Dongju couldn’t keep his eyes off the black eggs even as the duct tape tore off him and left his lips raw. The sock was taken and a scoop of eggs was shoved into his mouth. At worst, eggs were rotten sulfur. At their best, they were apparently a dazzle of beautiful richness drizzled across each taste bud. He’d never tasted anything so magnificent before. The man gave him some water next, and Dongju drank it down.

And then the sock was shoved in and some new duct tape was applied.

He got one scoop of eggs. One fucking scoop.

The man finished the eggs on his bed, and Dongju felt like he could burst out and throw a tantrum like a spoiled brat. He put hung his head and thought about food, squeezing his eyes and wanting to scream. The few bits he was fed woke the ravenous beast in his gut and he was left craving more. His stomach roared out, and he gave an agonized heave then tempered himself once more.

At least he got something, right?

The third day, the man received a call. He left the house to take it, and when he came back, he slipped the old Nokia-looking phone into his pocket and gave Dongju a look-over.

“Alright,” he said. “Time to go.”

Dongju jumped. He was leaving? The man took him outside and they walked a thin dusty path. Occasionally they passed a huttish-looking cottage and at night fall, they met a woman. She looked Dongju up and down, they talked, and finally the man said, “500.” The woman pulled out some cash, gave him what he wanted. During the handoff, Dongju tried to make a run for it, but his malnourished legs buckled under him, and he fell.

He spent the next few nights with her the same way, except she cleaned him up.

She brought an old browning toothbrush to his face and he pulled away, disgusted. She told him she had some tools in the back he wouldn’t appreciate if he didn’t just let her brush his teeth. When she did, she grabbed his hair, shoved his head over her sink, and scrubbed his mouth like it was a floor. She sanitized his wound and closed it with some bandages.

At least he was clean.

The woman walked him a bit of ways and handed him off to someone else for 1500, but this time, it was to a man with a vehicle. They drove a long while, but at least he could sleep during the ride.

When he was woken, they were in a neighborhood of livable homes. Through the breaks in between houses, Dongju saw other rows of houses, similar to the suburbs.

He was hung up inside with a few other girls, all with soft pretty faces. Wrists tied and set on a hook too high, and Dongju’s body stretched to meet the requirements of the floor and the hook.

This time, he stayed for five days, breaks given once a day.

The girls weren’t disturbed for some reason, just him. He waited on the couch, muscles basking in the glory of not being in that agonizing position, as the man and another conversed. The second man and Dongju were escorted out by the first, and when they stepped out the door, the two men were shot instantly one after another, right in the skull. They dropped, blood pouring out. Dongju shot back into the house, and seconds later a group of girls ran in. He was terrified, but one of them came up to him and hushed him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she hurried. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Dongju didn’t trust it. The other girls raced by, up the stairs, into the kitchen, to the back, about five of them.

“We got ‘em!” someone called out.

“Alright, hurry up! Get everything you can. Kim will be here soon!” said the one in front of Dongju. “Get up! We’re here to rescue you.”

The girls in the room were being shuffled out one by one, and the ones that came in were holding clothes, boxes of food, soap, and more. A van screeched to a halt outside. Dongju was pulled up.

“Go!”

He went. He wasn’t sure why, but he went.

The doors of the van were opened, and their stolen merchandise was shoved in. They hotwired the man’s car, and Dongju was shoved inside along with two other strung-up girls. One of their rescuers cut their ropes, ripped off their duct tape, and hopped in the driver’s seat. One of her partners jumped in shotgun, and they took off.

The girls up front were giddy. The one not driving turned back.

“You’re probably confused. Don’t be. They were trying to sell you for sex slavery. We almost were sold too.” After a response of silence, the girl turned back around. “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of you. Us pretty faces have to stick together.”

They travelled from neighborhood to neighborhood until theirs was found. They parked the van in the garage and pulled the other one.

The house was nice. Small but nice, and it almost reminded Dongju of his. He and the rescued girls were on the floor of the living room, couches and chairs. They were given blankets, and Dongju was excited but he didn’t let it show. It hugged him, and he cuddled up to it, watching his rescuers go back and forth. They brought out food, and Dongju shot his eyes to a plate, watched it as it came to him. They set it down, and he didn’t move. They assured him and the others everything was okay now and receded into their bedrooms to give them space. Dongju ate. It was unlike anything he’d ever eaten before, even though it was only a sandwich and some carrots.

He slept hard that night.

When he woke, everyone was gone. He shook but didn’t move. Where was everyone? From the kitchen there was laughing. Taking the blanket, he poked his head inside. Oh. There they were.

“Finally awake?” one said. “You slept a while.”

He nodded, and they invited him inside to sit, one giving him his stool and jumping on a counter. He didn’t talk at all, as did most of the ones rescued. One pitched in every now and then, but for the most part, their rescuers talked. Dongju was fed once again, and after some time, he huddled in a chair back in the living room, and he could sleep, eat, and use the restroom whenever he wanted. They played cards later; well, Dongju watched, but they looked like they were having fun. Dongju told them his name weakly, and they smiled, welcoming him, and over the next few days, he grew more comfortable, even playing cards with them, silent as he was.

As he waited for his turn, his eyes wandered. The curtains gave them privacy, and the chandelier above illuminated the room to a soft glow. He wondered how they got all of it. He’d zoned out, so Kim reached out carefully to get his attention, smiling affably. Kim was really sweet. She got everyone black drinks, and when Dongju looked at it cautiously, she assured him it was just lemonade. It was. He gave a small smile when he tasted the tart citrus of its flavor, and Kim clapped excitedly. “He smile!” she said.

Showering was the best part. They gave him a towel and let him take all the time he needed, and the heat rained down his back, between each strand of hair, and cleaned the sour scent that had built up his body like mold. And then he curled up in a chair after throwing on some sweatpants a bit too big (they said they got it from the man’s house), and Kim said they would take them all out to learn how to use a gun the next day then left them to sleep. He closed his eyes without a grimace, and he told himself to thank them the next day.

“We are going into Underground territory,” Kim told them as they rode in the van the following day. “It’s a little scary, but as long as we don’t make a scene, we’ll be okay. Oh! And also here are some masks to cover your face until we’re safe.”

She tossed a beanie with eye holes cut out, and he fingered it a bit before pulling it on. He felt like he was going to rob a bank. The others looked like they were.

He was still too nervous to talk. Every attempt got caught in his throat, but he was determined to get over that. They arrived at their stop, and the doors opened. They were in an alley. Moisture dripped down the sides of bricks, and the potent scent of rotten garbage lit the air. Water dripped softly somewhere behind him.

Kim knocked on a door into the left building. Its hinges ground as it opened, and Kim shuffled the others ahead of her, and there were some men in suits and sunglasses waiting. Kim removed her mask and told everyone it was safe now, the door being bolted shut. Dongju watched the others do it before he did, and it ruffled his hair as it came off. The main man, he was bald, and he turned to them.

“These are them?”

“Yup,” Kim said.

The bald man snapped a finger toward them. “Alright. Tie ‘em up.”

Dongju sucked in a breath. What?

His wrists were seized, tied, and a collar was clasped around his neck. Panic struck him instantly. One of the girls started screaming.

“I’ll give you 15,” Baldie said, and Kim smiled as he handed her the cash. “Take ‘em to the back. Start teachin’ them now.”

Dongju was yanked away, Kim not sparing a single glance as she walked out.

—

Bambi was doing his makeup in the dressing room, mirror lights steaming his face. He and Chastity were the only ones in the room now, and he’d never heard her talk until now.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Bambi,” he said, finding it rude she didn’t know.

“No, your real name.”

Bambi started and almost shoved mascara all over his eyelid. He hadn’t been asked his real name once in the two months he was here. He had even started to forget about it, claiming Bambi as his new identity. Before arriving to this place, wherever he was, his mother paid his acting lessons; playing Bambi wasn’t that hard. He told himself, but when he pulled the mascara brush away, he saw his solemn eyes masked by long eyelashes in the mirror before him. He shook his head and remained silent. He didn’t want to answer, he didn’t want to think about anything that could crack the brittle armor he caged himself in, and even if he did, he wasn’t sure if he could. He hadn’t spoken all this time here. He didn’t trust anyone enough too, and his masters shocked him with his collar if he did anything other than nod or shake his head.

He finished his makeup, covering the scar from his bullet injury, put on his heels, and lined up backstage with the other dancers.

That night passed like the other nights, a blur of lights in his eyes and watchers jacking off if they so pleased, and when the lights shut off, signalling 3 AM, he remained still for a moment. His hand was still up from when he waved his guests goodbye, and the corner of his eyes were tugging at something inside: tears—pain. His arm wanted down, tired, so Dongju released it. Backstage, he took off his heels somberly, and as he took off his makeup in the dressing room, his head was heavy.

He missed Dongju.

It was time for him to figure out how to escape this place.

—

When the dancers marched onto the two stripped stages, they did so with a facade of confidence. No one could hear their heels under the sea of music or feel how much their feet hurt wearing them for hours at a time. As dark as the black light that shone down on them was, it was still too bright for Dongju. It seemed to burn his near-naked body, yet there was still a chill too cold for the heat of the lights to stop.

Dongju wouldn’t be able to dance without his acting experience. Because it wasn’t him dancing, it was Bambi.

Bambi took the pole like it was his partner, rode it for their entertainment, and he did the best he could. If he didn’t, he’d be like the others, used for sex.

It’d been another month. He decided to use one of those obsessive guests that spent all their money on their addictions. The man he chose was a regular, but he only seemed to have a few different outfits and all of them were a bit past their use-date. Bambi coaxed him over with a lustful performance, gave him all the attention he wanted, and used him for his own desires.

Tonight was the night that’d he’d escape. The man flashed Bambi a glance of the gun under his jacket, signalling he was ready.

3 AM hit, the lights shut off, and Dongju jumped off stage. He didn’t think they designed this set-up too well, but thankfully they did. After plucking off his heels (he wore slip-ons tonight), he had about twenty seconds to get out the door, so he grabbed the man’s wrist and ran. Dongju didn’t know the way out though, so he let the man (What was his name again? Started with a J.) lead him through. Guards in suits discovered them fast, but J knew how to aim and shot them dead in their skulls. It made sense that he did; not that Dongju knew how the world worked here, but it was by chance that he could escape the barrenlands from before. If J could get out all on his own, that meant he had to have something to present—just because he had ragged clothes and impulsive tendencies didn’t mean he was incapable.

They were in the alleys, out a door different from the one Dongju entered four months ago, and J picked Dongju and his whopping 112 pounds of starvation up and charged deeper into the concrete passages, trying to get lost in the maze of back streets so the guards couldn’t find them.

Stronger and faster, the guards found them. They shot J once in the back then in the ankle. He crashed down, Dongju dropping from his grasp, and he ripped around. His aim was still better; the guards were down in a moment, and Dongju raced over to get their guns, 2 of them, and took a moment to act like he cared for J. Feigning trust, he handed the guns over, but J let him keep one. For protection, he said, and Dongju didn’t show his satisfaction. 

Dongju helped him up and they hobbled further into the endless turns and cuts of the alleys. When J decided they were safe, Dongju set him against a wall. He got close to him, faking distress.

“What do I do?” he quavered, caressing the man’s face with compassion.

He shoved into him, hands on his chest, and looked him deeply in the eye. J put his hands around his cheeks, lips close to Dongju’s, and whispered softly.

“It’s okay, little Bambi. Don’t worry so much; we’ll be okay,” he said, and rancid vomit dressed his breath.

Dongju had tears plucking at his eyes, real ones. J would think they’re tears of worry, which only made the trust he’d been shaping over the last four weeks stronger, but they were really ones of repulsion. He pulled away urgently and found the bleeding hole in J’s ankle. J ripped a part of his shirt, and Dongju wrapped it around like the nurses had bandaged his own.

“We gotta head to the market,” he said. Dongju showed confusion. “The only place you can get medicine is through the black market; we call it the mantle. You don’t know about it yet?”

“I’ve been stuck in that place since getting here. I don’t know anything.”

“Shit, baby. I’m sorry,” he said, and he started getting up. Dongju hurried to help him. “I’ll explain on the way.”

They hobbled away, and Dongju learned about the Mantle, or the ring that split the warzone blocks that they were in or the safe blocks on the other side; the crust or the core, the dirty or the clean. Its whole purpose was to segregate, kept running by those with wealth to remain a strong boundary. There’s a 100,000 dollar fee to get on the other side unless escorted by a resident. The Mantle itself was too far away to reach, but there were small branches every now and then. It was a thirty minute walk to get to one, J said.

5 minutes out of 30 used.

“Shittiest part of it all: the Mantle charges insane prices on everything to keep us trapped. $25 for an apple. Few people have enough money to go to other territories and get regular priced shit, and the ones that do price them high too, half as much as the Mantle though, so there’s that.”

Dongju was curious. He had a million questions.

“Any questions?” J asked.

Dongju shook his head. Time was limited, and he didn’t know how he was going to escape.

“Actually,” he said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

It wasn’t a lie. He actually did have to pee, but he maybe he could catch him off guard, shoot him, then run away. J nodded, and they stopped. Dongju stood a moment, waiting, then started.

“Here?” he asked. “Can’t I get a little privacy?”

Dongju regretted that question the moment it came out, worried it was too assertive; J seemed fine and obliged, but rather letting Dongju go off on his own, he just took him to the cross-section of two alleys and let him piss around the corner, shunning his eyes.

“You gonna go?”

Dongju scrunched his face. He wasn’t planning on actually pissing but he had to now; the man was much less trusting than Dongju thought, and he already suspected his betrayal. It was good information to have though.

“Just a bit nervous,” he answered.

He reached down with his free hand, the other seized by J, after tucking his gun between his thighs and pushed down his spandex. He swallowed grimly and released. The liquid splashed in the silence, and he grimaced in the long wait that it was, having not urinated in 8 hours, given that it was probably 4 now. J didn’t seem disturbed.

He turned, and a gun sounded. A bullet pierced Dongju’s side. He yelped, and J threw him back, shielding him from harm. Still in J’s grasp, Dongju had to be patient, but this could be his chance. He looked around him and down the alley. There was a woman poking around a corner like them. They shot back and forth, missing a few times.

Dongju was behind J unwatched. Now was his chance, but if he shot him down now that meant he had to take care of the woman by himself. He had to wait.

Where would he shoot anyway? In the heart? There’s no way he’d hit it properly. He looked J up and down—the liver? Kidney?

The spine. Up on the neck; that would paralyze him if he hit it right and there was no way he wouldn’t. He waited for the woman to go down.

 _Now_.

The gun fired; J dropped. Dongju looked down, and J’s eyes were wide and burning rage into Dongju, but seconds later, the life in them seemed to fade, and his body went limp. Dongju scouted him, took the guns, and found his wallet. There was 800 bucks in it. He ran over to the woman and scouted her. He took her t-shirt, jacket, gun, and the 931 bucks that were on her.

He looked down at the spandex, took her pants too; then he remembered his face that he couldn’t cover up.

Shit.

—

A bell chimed as he pulled through the door and collapsed on the ground. 

His heart was fast, trying to counteract the blood draining from six bullet wounds, but he was haggard and his breath was slow because of it. It took him two hours to find the shop. At first, it was quiet, but as the red in the sky deepened, Dongju saw more and more people, injecting themselves or smoking stuff that he didn’t want to know anything about. Every time he spotted someone, he yanked up his jacket and shunned his face, hoping they were too busy with their drugs to care, and surprisingly, there were a lot of others wearing masks; maybe they wouldn’t think about it.

The city was constructed weirdly. There was an elaborate labyrinth of backstreets, like an extended alley split infinitely; doors leading inside unknown places didn’t have signs, except for the occasional small wood one pinned up and reading something short like, “Supplies” (except the black market shops; apparently they advertised liberally). He passed someone taking one down. Most alleys were short but every now and then there was a long and endless strip that Dongju would hurry through nervously.

Eventually, someone saw through Dongju shunning his face. They shot at him instantly, and Dongju wasn’t prepared as he couldn’t see them through the jacket. They chased him, and others found out too, and they started fighting each other for him. That was the only reason he even made it, actually, them distracting each other and what not.

Now he bled all over the market’s floor as he tried to pull himself back up. He looked around. Shelves littered with weapons, books, clothes, and more, and racks positioned in aisles dressed the center, looking just as cluttered by way of all the different shades of black blending in with each other. There were other rooms adjacent, much the same from what he could see in the empty doorways. Dongju panted heavily as he dragged himself in between two high racks, looking them up and down. If there lay a gun on the shelf, it looked beat up, and if there lay a jacket, it was torn. Dongju came to the end of this one, and his eyes wandered around, distrustful. From behind him came a voice.

“Wow, what a surprise; Bambi did show up.”

Dongju turned sharply, forgetting his fatigue.

“There’s a warrant out for you, little one,” the man said, coming out of the aisle over. He walked with a nonchalant cockiness, playing with his knife as he looked pitifully at Dongju. “They’re not paying much, but money’s money.”

Dongju ripped up one of the guns. He stumbled getting it and didn’t look too convincing. As he watched the man, the barrel trembled under his line of sight.

“Leave me alone,” he said through gritted teeth.

The man raised a finger and pointed it to the entrance as he stepped closer. Dongju kept his eyes trained on him.

“No gun use allowed. Can’t you read?” he said and lifted his knife. “I can use this though.”

His eyes were hard, waiting for Dongju to make a choice. Dongju lowered his gun, but in the corner of his eye sat a knife on the rack; he stepped over, his body aching, and reached for it, but the man chuckled.

“What’re you doing, sweetheart?” He shook his head, an amused smile dressing his expression. “You must’ve been captured as soon as you got here if you don’t know. Let me help you out: that’s not your property. Don’t touch it.”

Dongju curled his fingers around the tang, unsure if the man was baiting him or not. He waited for the man to traipse his merry way closer so he could pull the knife ut on him, but as the distance between them shortened, Dongju felt the urge to run growing inside. When there was only two feet left, Dongju bolted through the aisle and cut inside one of the other rooms, but the man snatched him fast, wrapped his arms around Dongju’s small frame and tightened like quicksand around his squirming body. Blood squeezed out of his injuries from the tension.

“Excuse you!” came a woman’s voice. Dongju gasped as he shot his left. “Are you bothering a customer?”

“He’s a possession, not a customer.”

The woman looked at Dongju.

“I can protect you,” she said. “$1000 fee.”

Dongju hesitated. $1000? The man scoffed and started pulling him away. The woman slung a gun at J.

“Yes or no,” she demanded.

The club flashed through Dongju’s mind. “Deal.”

She turned to the man.

“Let him go, or your brain is blown. Simple enough.”

The man took a moment, but he shoved Dongju out of his grasp.

“Fucking tart,” he spat as he left the shop.

The woman smiled. “Take your time.”

She wandered off, and he stood there a moment, checking out the place. The door chimed as someone entered, and he quickly hid his face. He decided to look for a mask, and then something to tend his wounds with.

The first mask he came across he raised and looked it up and down, but he stopped when he saw the tag, a little sticker with marker he could barely see: $76. He slid it back down quick as if he’d never seen it.

It took him too long to find what he wanted. He saw some cargo pants that looked useful, but when he checked them, they were $250. Sweatpants were cheapest, and it was difficult finding the right size, along with shoes. The shoes he grabbed smelled rotten, but at least they had a rubber sole. He got a small backpack and tucked some bandages in it. There was a section specifically for medicinal needs, looking rather sketch. He picked up a tube, read the label carefully. Bacterial ointment, used for infection prevention.

He was at $435. Surely that was enough for some extra bullets, but if their cost was anything like the prices of the guns... 

He didn’t actually know what bullets to get, so he crept over to the woman from before after a long moment of pepping himself up. His mask was on, smelling musty, and he carried everything else.

“Ready for check out?” she chirped.

“Actually—” His voice got caught in his throat. “I was wondering if you could help me… get the right bullets.”

He shifted his eyes nervously and squeezed the pants.

“Sure!” she said.

She asked to see his guns, and he shifted his luggage over to one arm and lifted his shirt to show her the guns tucked under his pantline. After her quick examination of them, he followed her around and she found a sack of bullets for 350. He didn’t have enough for them, but she told him he could sell two of his guns for a hundred each and that’d be fine. He tried to bite back his disgust. _The other guns cost at least a thousand._

“They’re all different types,” she continued. “That’d mean you’d need another two sacks, so they’d be useless anyway.”

She smiled.

Dongju looked at her deadpan.

“Fine,” he said.

He checked out, and she handed him $146 as change.

“Can you tell me something?” he said.

“Depends!”

“Is there anywhere I can work?”

“Sure! I’m guessing you mean you want to be paid, correct?”

_Obviously._

“Yes,” he answered.

“What’re you looking to do?”

He took a drawn out breath.

“Dancing.”

“Ah, yes! Plenty of places, but I’m going to need about…” She thought long and hard. “$146 for the answer.”

Dongju’s jaw tightened. He handed over the cash.

“I recommend working for the Underground themselves. And because you’ve been such a great customer today, I’ll even give you this free map and mark it down for you.” She took a marker and circled two spots. “This is you now. And this is where they’re at.”

He stared a moment, then looked up with that grimace stained on his expression.

“Is there anywhere else?”

She remained silent, straight and poised, but the smile on her face spoke loud.

“How can I trust you?” he asked.

“I work for the Underground! There’s no one more trustworthy. They’ll promise your share of the earnings 100% of the time!”

“Share?”

“You have to pay for your pole! Or did you think it was free?” Her bright smile stung his eyes.

“How do I know you won’t ship me out to be… you know…”

“The Market always keeps its promises. In fact, I can get a contract going right now.”

“Explain the contract.”

“It finalizes your salary and states that you work for six months before breaking the contract.”

“Six months? Can I get anything shorter?”

“Adjustments to the contract may affect your salary.”

Dongju hated how cryptic she was being, but he swallowed his anger.

“Let me read it, and we can discuss.”

“Sure thing! Follow me to the back if you would.”

It was a cramped office. A desk, some chairs, a computer, some files. She fingered through the files and plucked out a sheet of paper, then she twiddled on her computer and wrote down some personal facts about Dongju, his height, age, weight, birthday, which she put as January 19th, and she kept writing even when he tried to speak up about it. She handed him the contract, and he scoffed when he came across the salary.

“They take 75%? That—”

“Salary is non negotiable.”

She had her hands clasped together and set on the desk perfectly still. She felt more like an AI than a human.

“And if I wanted a shorter contract time?” he said, irritated.

“80%.”

He cursed to himself. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

“How do I get there?”

“By foot since you’re broke… about two days.”

“Two days...” His voice was rather calm considering his annoyance. He spoke with apathy, and maybe he kept himself calm because talking loudly made his torn side scream at him. “I can’t— I’d probably already be taken again.”

“We can escort you up there, of course.”

Dongju knew where this was going.

“For how much?”

“5% more. But of course, the contract would reset after three months if you choose to update it, and you would start back at 75%. If you are popular enough, your owners may even offer you a lower rate.”

He put out his hand, and she gave him a pen.

“Thank you for doing business…” she started, and when she finished, Dongju boiled, unsure, wondering if she overheard the title or if she’d expected all of this. “...Bambi.”

He clenched his jaw and signed.

—

“All the others look at me like I’m a fucking joke,” Dongju said one night as he sat on the edge of the roof of his apartment, eating his bread. In the distance, huge rays of light beamed, and the night sky lit up each time; Lee said the numbers were playing again, and Dongju thought back to his first night, thinking it was them. “You know how embarrassing it is to get only $200 a night because you’re a buffer? Buffer. That’s what they call the opening dancers, because they’re like the load time before a video starts.” He chomped on his bread angrily, and muttered to himself, “At least I’m not obsessed with fucking some dude. God, if they’d shut up about him.”

Lee, one roommates, shrugged, a spark of red light flaring up over the horizon.

“Prove them wrong.”

“I just started a month ago. It’s a lot harder than you think to flip yourself upside down on a pole.” He sighed loudly. “The best girls can do that. They starve themselves and somehow have enough energy to do that.” He noted how he shook holding only a piece of bread.

“Money’s a powerful force.”

“No kidding.”

He finished his bread. He felt sick afterward, but he was growing used to it. He ate so little that his body seemed to not know how to digest it anymore; two slices of bread, a bit of lettuce, and two eggs. That was as much as he could afford outside his very luxurious apartment. For $125 a month, he got to share a small room with eight other people.

“And it doesn’t help that I’m still healing from my gunshot wounds.” He lifted his shirt to reveal one of his many white scars. “Kills a boner real fast, apparently.”

Lee nodded and offered a hit of his blunt. Dongju gave a weak glance and shook his head.

“Thanks though,” he said.

Lee took his time hitting it, coughed, and reassured Dongju. “Don’t worry. At most, you have a few weeks and then you can cover the scars with some makeup.”

Behind him, the other residents were loud. On Saturdays, a bunch of them came up to the roof and did drugs. Dongju had heard that someone jumped off after doing too much heroin, but he wasn’t there. He was only here this week because Lee noticed how pissed off he was and invited him up. He was hesitant, but he figured if he could sleep in the same room as him for a month, he could trust him enough to go to the roof with him.

And then Lee started asking questions, and before Dongju knew it, he was ranting about the past 6 or so months, barely giving Lee anytime to talk himself. He talked about when he first appeared, then Kim, then the three months of dancing, and how he never wanted to do it again, yet here he was, and it was awful. He barely had time on stage, and he shared it with other “buffers,” and some of them left after their shift to sell their body. If he wanted any money, he’d probably have to do the same. The better dancers mocked him and told him his contract wouldn’t be renewed if he didn’t stop sucking. They pissed him off so much, but he kept it to himself. The only words he actually spoke were ones of quick small talk. He hadn’t talked to anyone like this… since getting here actually.

It felt nice.

“Hey, thanks by the way,” he told Lee, realizing it’d probably been an hour or so. “I didn’t mean to take up all your time.” 

“It’s good,” he said. “Sounds rough... Can’t lie though; it took me a few years to get here. I feel like your six months is miniscule.”

Dongju glared at him.

“I take back my thanks,” he said and added for a facetious courtesy, “But thanks.”

Lee shrugged.

“You’ll understand me one day, kid.”

“I’ll try my hardest not to,” Dongju said, and when he reflected on it, he realized how sad a phrase it was. “I don’t want to be numb like you,” he whispered, and the racket of yelling and laughter drowned him out. “If people weren’t so greedy, none of us would be suffering so much.”

He looked over his shoulder, as did Lee.

“Suffering? They seem like they’re having fun to me.”

“Behind their drugs,” Dongju insisted. “Imagine if they could smile without them.”

Lee turned back around, watched the city before him. 

“Is there such a thing?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” he jerked his head at him. “Of course there is.”

Lee laughed so hard it eventually turned into a cough.

“Alrighty, young one. Too much angst for one night.”

“You’re not that much older than me.”

“Depends on how you look at it.” Before Dongju could respond, he waved his hand. “Anyway, anyway. I see it’s important for you, this naive stuff of yours. If it makes you feel better, Block 80’s apparently almost done with a marketplace that isn’t associated with the black market. Underground’s pissed apparently.”

“I’m a little confused,” Dongju said, watching the people 200 feet below. “Does the Underground like… run this place… or something?”

“You’re six months old and you don’t know this much? You really haven’t talked to anyone, huh?”

“It’s defense,” Dongju said, ignoring his strange choice of words.

“Gotcha. Well, to answer your question. The Underground was a gang when our territory was made in the 1800s. There were a bunch of gangs, but all of them eventually got sucked up by the Underground or the Red Thieves. Block 80’s in Red ground, and if they have a free market going, everyone’s going to move up there, but then again, fuckin’ bastards’ll find a way to keep us here. I’ve been here a decade and it’s still a dream to get past the gates.”

“Past the gates… Into the… what was it? The core?”

“So you do know something?”

“Barely.”

“Don’t worry. Rumor has it the Raven is trying to make this place a consumer territory. Granted that rumor’s been here since before I was born, but… Maybe one day…”

“Sorry. Who’s trying to do what?”

“The Raven’s head of our territory. It’s T-358 if you didn’t know. No one really knows his name; apparently he’s pretentious like that, just like all his buddies.” He pointed at the light beams. “Bet that’s 46 right now. He’s got a wicked beam I hear.”

“46!” Dongju said. “That’s who everyone’s obsessed with.”

“Oh yeah. Sluts go wild for him. But anyway, sorry, that’s not the point. Raven’s ambitious. That’s all we really know of him, so I’m not really sure what his goals are, but apparently T-252 feels threatened. All we can do is sit back and hope a war isn’t started between the two of us. We’ll probably lose.”

Dongju looked out onto the city. It was much more normal than ten blocks back, where everything was a maze built for protection. Like Detroit (the only city he could recall with a bad crime rate), except probably worse. Against the monochrome streets, the lights seemed to literally rain down yellow. People usually clung to the shadows though, the light a waste. Down the streets, music boomed. A couple ofnaked people were running below, howling with laughter.

“Is it possible to escape?” Dongju asked.

“Escape? Well, I’ve been trying for a decade, like I said.”

“No, I mean…” Dongju raised his arms, unsure of how to show him everything. “Here. Everywhere.”

Lee scoffed and sucked on his blunt.

“Not if Satan has his way,” he said, and Dongju gave a gruff hum of agreeance.

“Feels like that sometimes.”

Lee looked him over then hit him softly. “Hey. Quit thinking like that. It’ll get you hurt… You always wear that mask?”

“Except for work.”

“You know.” Lee tossed the rest of his blunt down, now nothing but burning ash. “There’s better places to work than your Underground place.”

“I’m sure. I was desperate.”

“Are you trying to leave?”

“Depends. What’re you thinking?”

“Well, I know a few places, but first, when I say ‘better’ I mean for money. They’re a lot more dangerous.”

“I always have time to decide.”

“You’re right. The first place is—”

The Cage.

It was his only choice because Lee said they would pay for him to have his own makeup, attire, and even some hygienics. It was a loan with an interest, of course, and he had to pay them back, but apparently it wouldn’t take that long.

“Right this way,” the bouncer said, and Dongju stepped downstairs and followed the thunderous bass of music into the shadowy room.

He soon found out why it was called what it was. A fight ring boxed in by metal fences stood in the center. A cage. The audience hugged as close as they could do it, roaring for who they wanted to win. Dongju caught a glimpse of a fist pulverizing a jaw; the jaw popped off its socket and dangled. Dongju jerked his view way. It was humid, hot, and crowded. There was a bar, and people drank beer aggressively, spilling on themselves, and they shouted and hollered. Across it were some seated tables where food was served. The scent of greasy fries filled Dongju’s nose, and his mouth began salivating. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, remembering that he didn’t have the money to spend on luxuries like that. He opened them back up, saw the dancers grinding on their guests, and he looked to the back, to where the poles were. That was his spot.

He walked over to the bar.

“What can I do for ya?” yelled the bartender.

Dongju tore off his mask. The music roared, and his voice was almost drowned out.

“What do you think?”

“Well, get dressed,” she said. “Don’t just stand there.”

He leaned in.

“I heard I could get a loan to buy some material.”

She nodded in realization. “Ah… I see. One moment please.”

She left and came back with a sheet of paper and a pen. He could barely read it in the darkness, but eventually he signed.

The woman threw her thumb over her shoulder.

“We have shit in the back. Help yourself.”

He shut the door in the back to change, and he’d gotten really good at putting on makeup, so it took him ten minutes.

It was his third time at a new place, but he still had the discomfort of eyes watching him. He was once again put on display like a doll. Naked and for someone else’s pleasure.

A man slapped his ass as he passed. Nauseating humiliation flooded Dongju, but when he turned around, he looked frisky.

“No touching,” he said dabbing a finger on the man’s nose. “Unless you have the cash.”

He strutted off and prowled through the raging bodies around him, waving haughtily at lips that nipped at him playfully or eyes that showed hunger. He took a pole with another man, and he stole the audience’s eyes. Expectation. They were waiting to see what new meat was brought in, if he was worth a climax or not. It still wasn’t easy to perform, even if he’d done it a hundred times. Here it was worse though; his salary was purely based on if he had the talent to get his audience to pay.

As the black-haired man danced, he gave Dongju a ravenous glance, and an idea occurred to Dongju. He always worked better with people when he was nervous.

He tugged the black haired man near him and stood on his toes to reach the ear of the taller.

“Want to try something with me?” he asked, placing his hands on the man’s tone chest.

The man backed up and looked curiously into Dongju’s eyes.

“Sure,” he said with a smirk, and Dongju brought him close and his acting began.

The crowd howled, and Dongju swallowed his pride.

He had to get the money.

—

The two of them became a thing, and over two months, their reputation spread through the circuits of men and women with too much money on their hands, and they all came for the “Slutty Boys” or whatever stupid ass title caught fire. Dongju wondered how people with that much money even existed down here, and he found it annoying that he’d been here 8 months and still knew nothing.

They sat in the backroom, dividing up tonight’s income. 800 each. A shitty amount since they had to end so early.

“Is it really worth it?” Dongju muttered to himself, slumped in a chair.

“Are you really asking that?” went Gunwoo, and he grimaced.

“No… but look at you. They almost broke your back.”

“And they almost ripped down your spandex.”

“We’re garnering quite the obsessive audience.” He glanced at Gunwoo. “Lay down. Don’t stress yourself.”

Gunwoo did as told.

“If they want us so bad, maybe they shouldn’t try to cripple us,” he said.

“I can’t believe someone actually tried to pull you off stage.”

“My back hurts so fucking much.”

“They could’ve paralyzed you.”

“I know, and that’d suck for both of us.”

They only wanted them together. Dongju tried on his own once; no one even glanced at him. Dongju sighed. Someone banged on the locked door, yelling.

“The blonde girl got raped yesterday,” Gunwoo said.

Dongju tossed up his head. “She did?”

“Upstairs. Yeah. Someone dragged her up there, and she was screaming but nobody heard.”

Dongju clenched his jaw and rested his head on the chair’s back once more. As he thought about her pain, tears pricked at his eyes.

“I feel so bad,” he said.

“Don’t. You don’t have room to.”

Dongju stayed silent, but his heart yelled. He curled up in a ball and shut his eyes.

“I guess your back hurts too much to walk,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Alright. See you in the morning.”

—

Dongju woke from a clicking sound. He was hazy, eyes trying to focus. He finally saw Gunwoo at the door. He must have been coming back from the bathroom or something.

“Are you okay?” Dongju said groggily.

“Good enough,” Gunwoo said and sat on the arm of the chair Dongju was sitting in. “You asked if it was worth it earlier. You do like working with me, right?”

“Of course... What’s this about?”

“Well… I just wanted to make sure.”

“I couldn’t have better,” Dongju said, reassuring him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Gunwoo smiled sweetly. “You’re so kind, Dongju.” He gave a small chuckle and took a deep breath.

Then he yanked Dongju from the chair and shoved him down.

“Gunwoo!?” Dongju squeaked as he hit the ground.

Gunwoo dropped onto Dongju, and he laughed excitedly.

“What are—Stop! Get your hands off me!”

But Gunwoo just laughed more, and Dongju tried processing what was happening. He watched Gunwoo a moment, saw the pure greed and lust that bore in his round eyes.

“No—Are you—” Dongju choked out a cry, and Gunwoo ripped down his spandex with a smirk.

“She trusted me too.”

Dongju’s heart dropped.

 _She was screaming but no one heard._ Gunwoo admitted guilt right before him, but he didn’t realize. He cursed himself for being so stupid.

“How do you think you’ll feel?” Gunwoo beamed. “How hurt do you think you’ll be when you have to decide between staying or going?”

Dongju slammed his arms forward, but they were caught. Gunwoo laughed as Dongju struggled to get free. He thrashed below, uselessly. Gunwoo seemed skilled; all in a swift motion, he lifted himself, threw Dongju onto his stomach, and sat back down. Dongju’s jaw smashed into the ground. In one hand, he held Dongju’s hands and with the other, he ripped the boy’s spandex. Dongju let out a vicious screech, one of seething rage. He looked in front of him, searching for anything he could use to escape, but there was nothing close to reach. He tried taking his hands back. One broke free; smushed against the ground with nothing to grab, he couldn’t do much, but he tried pushing himself up.

“ _Stop_ ,” growled Gunwoo. “You’re making this difficult.”

A fist smashed into the side of Dongju’s head, and the ringing started then came the addlement. He clenched every muscle in his body to keep Gunwoo out. A fist came to the other side. Gunwoo’s hips raised slightly. Dongju twisted onto his back, surged forward, and slammed his forehead into Gunwoo’s. His head pounded, his brain seemed to swell, but he pushed through, blood pumping. He grabbed Gunwoo’s neck and pulled their lips together just so he could bite the bottom clean off. He spat the flesh out as soon as possible, nausea waving through him like a chill, and shoved Gunwoo off as the man screamed. 

Dongju threw himself up. He ran. Yanked at the locked doorknob in terror as Gunwoo came for him.

“Get ‘ack here!” Gunwoo roared. “You _need_ ‘e.”

Dongju was choking back tears, but when he spoke with a tremor, they rained.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” he wailed, ripping open the door and darting out of the hallway.

He rubbed his palms on his lips to rid the diseased blood staining into them. He flew behind the bar and grabbed a vodka bottle. It shattered over Gunwoo’s head, and he grabbed whiskey bottle and chunked it too. He rushed over the bar and raced upstairs and into the streets. He covered his face with his hands, remembering that his mask was in his bag.

He took down the streets. Behind him came a malicious bellow.

“DONGJUUU!”

Gunwoo drew out the name, wrath swallowing him whole.

Dongju didn’t stop. Thoughts raced through his mind. Why did that happen? Why Gunwoo? Weren’t they friends? It hurt. It stung. It felt like he was clobbered with a bat over and over and over again, but all he could do was run and cry.

A car vroomed behind him, and he turned to wave before even seeing if it was a taxi, but he stopped. He didn’t have any cash on him. The taxi zoomed by and Dongju cried out, wanting to rip his hair out. He kept running. Down an alley, up a fire escape, onto the roof, and he leaped across the tops—his shortcut home.

His legs trembled, and his ankle rolled under him as he leaped. His shin smashed into the brick edge, and he crumpled into himself, wheezing. He sucked in, air streaming between his clenched teeth, and surged up once more. When he made it to his apartment’s fire escape, he took the stairs three at a time, shin pounding every other step. He split through the door and up the steps, ready to lock himself into his small, cramped room and count how many months he could survive with the 15 grand in his safe. He got to the door.

He didn’t have his key.

He shoved his hands through his hair and grated out a squeal of rage. He slammed his fists on the door. The door flung open. His bed sat in front of him, sheets thrashed around, and his safe was fractured in half, empty.

Dongju’s eyes were wide. He was still. Speechless, confused, unsure if what he was seeing was real.

Then it came back to him.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”

He raced into his room and threw up his sheets. He looked into the cut in his mattress where he stored a few thousand in case someone got to his safe. Nothing. He lifted his mattress to see into the one on the bottom. Nothing.

He dropped the mattress back down and froze. His cheeks were wet from tears, and his eyes ached. He looked around, but he wasn’t seeing anything. He sat like a baby, helpless, as he mindlessly looked at everything in a sort of awe. His palms smushed into the sheets below and he started unconsciously playing around with them.

What was he going to do?

He sucked in a breath, and still staring at nothing, he got up and shut the door. He flopped onto his bed and rolled up in his sheets.

He stared at nothing for a very long time and then found his way into a cold sleep.

—

Dongju worked a few nights. Made $800 in total. It was a shit income, and part of it was his fault. He didn’t pretend as well. He wasn’t as seductive. He’d already heard the first rumor about Gunwoo and him splitting, that they were useless separate.

He sat on his bed, looking at the $42 left over from purchasing some joggers, a tee, and a new set of sneakers—a replacement for the ones left in his bag. And a mask. Most important was the mask. He stared at the money for a moment then scoffed and tossed them to the side. He didn’t care where it landed.

This couldn’t be the rest of his life. He had to get out.

The next day he went deep into the alleys and knocked on a door. The garbage rot burned his nostrils as he waited, hands stuffed in his pockets. The door creaked open.

“You guys sell info?” Dongju leaned in, but he looked away.

“Sure. Whatcha want?” came the voice in the shadows.

“First, what’s your price?” 

“Depends. Whatcha want?”

“I fuckin’ hate it here.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Is there a quick escape?”

“Is that what you’re paying for?”

“Just conversation.”

“Well then I wish there was.”

“I was hoping you could help me figure out what I need to know. I don’t know enough to even question.”

“That could be expensive. How much you got?”

“42 bucks.”

“That’s one question. And a discount.”

“Can I get that discount for being a first?”

“You seem aight. I’ll let it slide. Come on in.”

Dongju slid in. They flicked the lights on, and the luminance was dim enough so that the shadows flickered and kept watch for their boss. It was a small room cluttered with boxes. The boy was round and looked younger than Dongju. He had a septum piercing with a small crystal in it. Dongju didn’t even want to think about how much it cost.

“Sit,” the boy said as he took a seat on a box. “There’s fine. Yeah. Tell me what you know.”

“Sure. There are sectors to this… I don’t know… territory? It’s sort of shaped like Earth from what I gather. Three layers. The outside, the middle, and the inside, where the… the… _us_ are kept from _them_. There’s the black market who manages all that, and we basically live in a really fucked up economy or something because of them. Then there’s the Underground. Not sure what they have to do with anything.”

“Now, what exactly are your struggles?”

Dongju thought this was odd. He did what was asked of him anyway.

“Being forced to, you know, dance… just to survive. I don’t know if there are other options or…?”

“Have you heard of the Red Thieves?” Dongju nodded. “It’s the other gang that own the blocks on the other side of the crust, in the blocks around 80, give or take. They don’t really have an economy, so you won’t have to make money to ends meet per se but… personally I think you’d do well going to see up there how some things can be.” He leaned over and dug in a small box next to him. He scratched down some writing on a slip of paper. “Here’s a number for a free ride. Now all you need’s a phone.”

Dongju took the slit of paper, looking at it quietly. The boy got up, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. Dongju was halfway out it when he called back.

“Thank you. I wasn’t expecting you to tell me so much.”

The boy laughed.

“Don’t thank me,” he said.

He shut the door, and Dongju was left pondering his last words. He took off to find a phone.

He could go work a few more days to get one, but he thought fuck it. He walked up to the first person he saw and asked. Easy enough. Except it wasn’t because it took him two whole hours before someone was trusting enough to let him use their phone. After he dialed the number, he was told to go to Hemlock Road in Block 21. Three days from now at 4:30 AM. There’d be a red van waiting.

As sketchy as that sounded, he went, and there were a few others going. He rode an hour or two until they got to Block 42. The riders next to him were talking. They had a map labeled “Red”. Dongju glanced over. Block 42 was only two blocks under 80 due to the set up of the territory.

He hopped out the back of the van. The other riders hastened past while he stood and observed. Buildings were crumbled and destroyed, and debris looked as if it had rained down. Boulders and wood and glass and metal bestrewed the terrain. Dongju walked forward, eyes wandering. He kicked at rock. The others from the van had vanished behind the crushed construction, and the vehicle started and drove off. He was left alone in the desolation.

There was a high-pitched beeping sound, quiet. Dongju trained his ears on it.

An explosion rippled through the air, and asphalt shot at him like bullets, sliced through his cheek, and dug in his back.

That was the start of the longest four weeks of his life.

—

He hid in the shadows between two buildings, leaning on the brick with his hands tucked in his pockets. His cheeks and under eyes hung heavy, his breath weighted. The bonfire in the townsquare ahead consumed flesh and bones and gave off a pungent rot. A flyer soaked in blood sat under his feet and read, “The Fittest Survive” and other details like location and time. The sheet was white with brown ink, something Dongju didn’t know existed anymore. He thought the only thing that wasn’t black was fire or other sources of light. He watched from afar. People had gathered to see the night’s show, and they put away their fighting for a rare moment of unison, where all seemed to watch with a single goal in mind. Except Dongju. He came to stall.

The square was wide and vast. Hundreds of people crowded around, eating and drinking. Someone held a head and stabbed at it; she didn’t look at it, rather she talked to others around her with a genuine smile laced with pride and greed.

Dongju’s vision was delayed. It was all imagination, but he was so tired that he couldn’t process things right and everything had a motion blur to it. The stab wounds that had jumbled up his innards, the hole sliced in his cheek, and the five bullet shots in him were getting infected. Down his stomach oozed yellow puss, icing his flesh like a frosting made of snot and vomit.

Tomorrow he’d try again to get some medicine. He tried making it into a safe zone the last four days ever since he stumbled across one, but those with the large guns and thick vests guarded it. They did it for fun, not because they were paid. He fingered the peanuts in his pocket, the ones they threw on the ground, and they laughed when his raging hunger impelled him to pick at them one by one.

The mountain of a fire whipped around in a frenzy, waiting to be fed. It was far from Dongju, but he could feel its heat. The orange radiated onto everyone’s bright faces and down their bodies. On the opposite side of the square, the wall of buildings broke and made way for a large street. The grumbling of a machine could be heard rolling down it, and quickly, the chatter of the crowd dissolved. The crane’s head appeared, tall and monstrous. From its claw hung a naked boy. It was slow as it crawled towards the fire. It proceeded all on its own, and only one line of code was wired into its mainframe, the objective at hand. As it came closer, Dongju saw the boy. He had a tiny waist and was tied up by his itty wrists. Dongju grimaced, an acrid taste bleeding down his tongue.

The crowd began roaring, their hunger insatiable. They clapped uncontrollably. A man threw his body back and howled, his teeth gnarled. The crane came, and those in its way moved away hastily, pupils filled by a mindless drug.

The crane stopped, its gears squealing as it released the tension in its body, and its catch dangled above the flames. The boy’s face was wrenched, and his cheeks were licked by the tears of grief. He’d been crying but he’d quit. The crane’s snout began descending, and the boy screamed and pulled up his legs. But the fire was starving, and its flames lapped at his feet despite.

This is what they came for?

The boy’s angonized chords rang out, and the song of torment and anguish bellowed through the organ’s pipes. The sanctuary recited the hymn in howls, hands clasped together and raised high, and the boy was submerged into the altar.

The acid in Dongju’s stomach curdled, and the infection purged out of his gut wounds as if the bacteria themselves wanted an escape. Dongju’s leg buckled, and he braced himself on the wall. The air in his throat grew thick, and it was hard to breathe. He slid down the wall, brought up his knees, buried himself in them. He guarded his ears, but it didn’t stop the thoughts from intruding within, flashing him images of a person being eaten alive.

The screaming had stopped, and Dongju pulled his hands away. He wrapped his arms around his shins and hugged himself.

“You might burn before you make it to the farms too,” a man said, voice nasally.

Dongju threw his head up. The man was short and had a pointed look about him.

“What?”

“Your kind’s easy to point out.” He looked over his shoulder, to the fire, then back at Dongju. “What, with your little cutesy ways and your little lost eyes. I’d turn back now if I were you, head back to the Under-lands where you came from. You won’t make it.”

“What…” Dongju was fatigued. He had to catch his breath before he started. “What are you talking about?”

He squinted at the man, eyes becoming sensitive to to even the dimmest of lights.

“‘What am I talking about?’ Survival. You can’t do it.” The man leaned down and harnessed Dongju’s attention with his antagonizing glare. “Look at you.” The man slapped at Dongju. Dongju threw up his hand, pulled back. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re a goddamn insult to us.”

“What the fu—”

“Huh? You want to talk?”

The man shoved at him. Dongju threw himself up, blocking the next shove when it came.

“Get away from me,” Dongju spat.

“Are you fucking telling _me_ what to do?” The man was getting heated, his sweat sponging out of his pores more noticeably. “Come on! Come on then! Come on come on come on!” He rammed at Dongju, rammed again, and each time the man’s hands came near, Dongju blocked and striked back.

“Stop it!” Dongju yelled, anger rising. “Fucking stop it!”

He pushed the man hard and thrusted past him. He dashed around the corner and through the obstacles of people and from behind him the man roared, a deep grating sound.

“YEAH GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! GO ON, BACK TO YOUR BITCH LANDS!”

Dongju slowed back to a walk once he felt he was far enough. The fire stung rom twenty feet. He covered his nose with one hand and pushed past people with the other. People were climbing on the crane now, and the man at the highest point bayed loudly.

“THOSE WHO DO NOT DESERVE PROSPERITY BE BURNED!” he yelled.

Others began their own chants.

“Destroy the bottomfeeders!”

“Ease their souls!”

“Purify the impure!”

And the roaring kept coming. With each chant came a more frenzied person. Someone crashed into Dongju’s back. Another came swinging their arms his way as they hailed their ideas as the great magnificent one. Dongju shoved past the people more hurriedly, but the more he yearned for an escape, the thicker the blockade seemed to get. They reached for him, grasped at his limbs and clothes. He yanked and jerked in every direction, disturbed anxiety melting down him.

“Stop it!” he said. “Stop fucking grab—Don’t touch me! I said don’t fuckin—”

A man spun him around, took hold of his shoulders, started violently shaking him. Dongju shoved him away.

“GET OFF OF ME!” he screeched and ran as fast as he could through the ocean of arms, taking back his limbs every time they were nearly stolen.

He gave one final thrust and propelled out of the mass, shooting between some buildings and out of the square. Streams of inner fluids trickled out of his wounds. Blood no doubt. His stomach throbbed from the scream, and the swelling misshaped his usually concave and starved stomach. His breath turned hoarse and grated in the back of his throat. He needed sleep, shelter. Medicine, but that wasn’t going to happen tonight. He needed away from the gathering first though, and even though his legs trembled from malaise, he decided he’d walk until he couldn’t remember how to get back.

He made passage down Toronto Boulevard, a wide street headed straight for the big clock tower. Anyone with a brain could guess that was a dangerous spot, but reverse psychology would tell you that nobody was there because of that. Dongju didn’t know where to go. The old billboards had a few faded letters left, nothing enough to read, and tossed beside a fire hydrant was a thin tire of those antique cars. Red ground had been a busy place at once he guessed. Its architecture was more urban than over in the Underground.

Dongju couldn’t walk anymore. His head was heavy and sagged with each step. He turned away from the clock, went down the streets that guided him elsewhere, but nowhere seemed any safer. He came to a broken statue of a man. It stood in between two sets of steps up to a columned entrance. It had no head and it wore a tailcoat and loose pantaloons. Stockings rose up to his under-knee and dress shoes clenched his feet tightly. ‘Gerold Lancaster’ read the plate. ‘Est. 1832.’

Guns rang out a few streets over. Dongju hurried. He skipped across the bricked streets with quick eyes. Hysterical laughter boomed in the distance, and the fervid screams of the square pierced into the atmosphere, echos mocking. He kept going, dragging himself in the darkness.

He heard steps, and he plunged himself in the crook of an old shop’s entrance. On the other side of him ran several steps. He flattened on the wall and held his breath. The steps trickled away. Down Great Avenue he heard pained moans, the sounds of one yearning for mercy, so he headed for Redford Street instead.

There came a thin pinching sound of releasing gas, and fog conjured in the streets. The scent of garlic burned in Dongju’s nose, like flesh on a stove, and his eyes screamed from the acidity. Poison. Dongju raced down the street, forked off down Something Lane. He headed left down 4th Whatever and skidded when he was faced with more gas. He took off right, stopped abruptly when meeting more, and sent himself elsewhere. He ran and stopped and pivoted as the gas emerged from the shadows. He rounded corner after corner, panting and looking for a way out, but the gas kept blocking another potential exit. He had only one route, and as he journeyed with no choice, his heart warned him of foreseen danger. Somewhere sometime, he’d be caught in a trap.

To escape, he tried fighting the flow of the fumes, rushing into a cloud. But it grew thick and swarmed around him. He cowered underneath it’s weight, as it sliced into his flesh and sizzled against it, and he wrenched his eyes shut. He thrashed in the blanketing magma and fought the grasps of the fiery arms that tried to take him only to lose. He shot out of the cloud the way he came and moved forward, down the path that promised his capture.

His heart was in throes, pumping blood violently to make up what was excreted out of his wounds, running away from the gas chasing him. His foot caught a wire, and his chin bashed into concrete. He tossed himself up only to crash back down from his disorientation. He braced himself, waiting for his vision to unmuddle. From the mist on his left came a streak of fire. It gutted into his side, sharp. He yelled as he yanked the arrow out, eyes spilling venom for tears as the gas enveloped him. His breathing convulsed and he hacked a feeling of glass shards in his throat.

He fought his way up, face twisting from the pained exhaustion, and took a step. Something shot from the thickness ahead and latched onto him, electrocuting him back to the concrete. He shuddered viciously, screaming in agony. A hand took his arm and dragged him away and out of the flame once the shocks stopped. His body felt a bare moment of ease before a bat shot to his head. He cried out, throwing his hands up. He found his vision. Above stood three people with masks hooked on their faces. One was mid-swing with the bat and it crashed into his jaw before he could dodge. Another held a machete; she swung down. Dongju yanked away, the blade slitting through the spot where his foot had been, and the bat smacked into his nose. It snapped, and he pulled away to escape but was caught by the third whose boot clamped Dongju’s head back. He could only feel the machete as it sliced through his shoe. His tormented screams echoed in his skull.

He couldn’t fight. He tried, but he was too weak. His body was through. All he could do was endure the machete slicing inch by inch up his leg. He screamed, not only from the endless ache, but the insanity that was building within. It was slow but powerful, a poisonous fog all on its own, consuming his consciousness and replacing it by a ravenous urge to escape. But every urge was smacked across the face, shut down by his inability and the power above him.

The bat snapped his ribs, the machete chopped his ankle. The bat smashed his teeth, the machete cleaved his shin. His head clouded with dysphoria. The world seemed to swish and billow, and his body followed suit, rocking and baying in the ocean of illusion; suddenly the world didn’t feel real, like everything was loose and detached. His mind faded away, the vague feeling of metal slicing at his knee.

—

A rumbling reverberated through the ground. Dongju peered through his swollen eyelids. Hazy, he was unsure of everything but the sound and maybe the red that burned behind the black fluffs above him. Oh. The sky, he remembered. The vibrations reminded him of an electronic massager. Soft, peaceful. His lead body lightened, and the cloud of sleep prodded him some more. His eyes rolled back, but he caught them, attempting to look for the cause of the rumbling.

The trucks came from the horizon slowly. People rode on the backs or stood tall and proud, and as they drove by him, a woman leapt off one and scooped him up; they didn’t stop for her, but it seemed normal. She handed him to someone and prepared to hop onto the next truck in line.

He rolled over limply when he was set down. Someone grabbed his leg and poured a cool liquid on it. He was distant, the pain in his leg faint from detachment. They wrapped something around it and stuck something sharp into his leg. It didn’t hurt, just nipped. A prickling numbness flooded his veins, enhancing the detachment he felt. His eyelids grew heavy and he slept.

—

They took him to the zone, where he awoke patched up and on a medicinal drug to ease the pain. He didn’t know which one, just that his body felt floaty. A woman talked to him and said he should take it easy. Any sudden movements could tear open his gut. She asked him why he came and after a few things said, he learned about the farms—the collectivist society that made the war zone in Red possible. He didn’t catch all of it, but he heard just enough to realize that he could escape this place, both Red and the Underground, where he’d be fed and well rested and all he’d have to do was work on farms or make clothes or weapons or rebuild towns if they’d gotten bombed. The latter wasn’t likely, as you had to make your own bombs if you wanted one. That was what she said anyway. All he had to do was survive the food chain of Red, get on top.

As if.

When the drug started wearing off, the pain crept towards unbearability, and he found someone who was helping others if he could have some more. They put in the needle when they got it, and he barely felt the usual nip of piercing skin.

At midnight on Saturday, the safe zone becomes “free” and it will relocate somewhere else, she said. She told him good luck. Because he couldn’t leave now, and if he stayed long enough, he’d make it out better if there were others as distractions.

Saturday came, and so did those with the big guns and the thick jackets. They sat outside the limits of the safe zone, talking amongst themselves with half-suppressed smirks and hearty laughs. It was calm and felt like a bunch of deer hunters gathered for the game later tonight. That wasn’t too far off from the truth.

Dougju was shoulder to shoulder in a bunched up crowd of other wounded. They sat packed in the center, a lot of them. The workers had packed everything up and now only made sure that nobody fired too soon.

A minute was left now, and the workers started their trucks and trailers. Dongju didn’t feel the fear. He felt normal, neutral. Thirty seconds left. A duo started lining the boundaries with gasoline. Five seconds left, a match dropped, and the flames ringed around. 0 seconds left—

—

It was his fourth week.

He hung trembling in a pitch black room, consumed by nausea, starvation, dehydration, sleep deprivation, and infection; the pain of a twisted wrist, a snapped ankle, a deformed forearm, and a shattered nose. Bleeding eyes, bleeding ears, bleeding nose. So much blood actually that he may as well have been bleeding from his pores. On his cheek the skin felt taut. The acid burn.

He was back to being tied up by the wrists, feeling the agonizing stretching of his muscles for days at a time. It’d been two weeks this time though. They cut him, they whipped him, they burned him, they drugged him. Poisoned, beat him. His head was draped down, weak, and he felt like a sack of flesh with misshapen bones and spoiling blood.

It was about the time for another session to start. He could tell by the way his blood flow changed, like it was signalling warnings to the rest of him. That irritating and revolting wave of emotion started rushing through him. The door up and to the right clicked open. He didn’t move. They stepped down the stairs, each step creaky and slow. Dongju’s neck started tensing in agitation, a restless, uncontrollable pain from restriction, from being forced to hear it every single time. He hung limp despite; he didn’t try to fight.

He didn’t know what they looked like. He had seen them that night when they took him, but he’d forgotten the details. And they never spoke. The only voices he ever heard were the long periods of screams they played on a little radio or something they placed at his feet. Screams, terrorized beckons that rang in his mind for hours on end.

The first thing they always started with easing his pain. They grabbed something beside him, and it always clanged when they pulled it down. He would soon feel the ground, and then he’d be sitting on it with his arms back in front of him, and the bliss would enrapture him. Alongside the euphoria sat apprehension, waiting and waiting for the moment he’d be tethered to the table and the wires would be wrapped around his wrists; when they started pulling on his wrists, tight, stretching his arms until they felt like they would be ripped off, him wheezing and giving suppressed screams through gritted teeth. Then they’d relax, let him catch breath, and start again, over and over again. Over and over.

The knife came next, a new place every time, and it was slow and steady as it carved into his structure. They gouged it into his thigh and shredded it down to his foot. Then they’d do it over in the same spot, over and over. And they never changed the routine. It was always release, table, pull, knife, burn, spoiled milk in his mouth, hang, then the radio... Except this time.

Under his wretched and anguished whines, there was a distant rumble. It made him nearly scream. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take the noise. It was probably him hallucinating, but then the pulling stopped. He hadn’t been burned yet; he was confused. His fear started spiking; what could be going on?

They undid the wires and picked him up. Then he heard the creaky steps, and they were going up? He was too? He started breathing fast, unsure. The door opened; they went through a hallway, out another door, and then there was light, a living room, full of other people. They laughed at him as he was taken away.

Then he was thrown outside, and his head smashing into the concrete was like jumping into his plush bed back at home. There were no ropes, no collars. His torturer shut the door, and he rolled onto his back. He saw the night sky, empty and serene, and felt how nice it would be to be the sky.

Why did they bring him out here? The black sky mocked him. They probably did it the same reason they let him on the ground a moment before he was put on the table. His heart twisted. A lightning streak shattered across the sky. He had to escape. But if he moved, they’d probably bring him right back in. He wanted this moment; he wanted it, he needed it. Thunder rolled out, and he was reminded of rainy days back at home. His muscles relaxed, and he stopped thinking. He just wanted to sit here, while nobody was looking for him, while nobody was in the streets, and remember how it was to just sit and observe.

The first drop he felt hit a wound. It burned, and he hissed. Another came down; he hissed, and so did the rain drop it sounded like. He must have been hallucinating. A drop splashed on his lips. It stung, and then as the rain sped up, so did the burning across his body, and eventually, pellets of acid seared his flesh. He closed his eyes and bathed in the poison. He didn’t move or try to get away. He just lay there.

He heard footsteps, and his arms trembled. They were passing him a few feet away, and he tried peering at them, angling his head to the side so the rain cut into his eyes as much. He met their eyes, and his heart wrenched.

It was him. The man from the start. The one with the cold yet heated eyes. The same ones Dongju remembers so perfectly.

The man stopped short at sight of Dongju. He squinted, seemed confused, and his lips tugged upward.

“Are you mute?” he said.

Dongju didn’t answer, didn’t move.

The man walked closer, hands in his pockets. The rain washed down his face, each drop leaving behind a red streak; at some spots where the rain hit too much, his skin was starting to peel and crack, blood fighting its way through. He squatted next to Dongju and raised an eyebrow.

“Well?”

“No,” Dongju whispered, fear lodging in his throat, breath heavy.

The man looked pleasantly surprised, and Dongju’s anxiety started clawing up his innards. The man was relaxed, his arms draped along his knees, and he radiated pure conviction and strength. His eyes wandered about Dongju’s body as he spoke.

“Do you feel pain?” He looked amused.

Dongju’s voice was weak. “Constantly.”

The man’s eyes clicked back onto Dongju’s. He was motionless for a long while, and his eyes pierced into Dongju as he searched for something.

“Is that you, sweetheart?”

Dongju clenched his jaw, regretting that the man recognized him; he stayed silent, but that was enough of an answer for the man. He knew.

“Your eyes,” he started and raised a finger to Dongju’s cheekbone, brushing it softly with his knuckle. The burning dissipated for a slight second and seemed worse when it came back. “How pretty.”

Dongju didn’t know what to say. Anger plucked inside, but he kept it contained.

“Why’re you north, baby?” the man asked.

“Bad luck.”

“As always.”

“And you?”

“Cocaine,” he said and patted his pocket. “I ran out.”

There was a moment of silence between them. The rain showered down, and by now, the man’s face was blistered with pimples; blood juiced from them like puss.

“Does it hurt?” Dongju asked faintly.

“Like it hurts you.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

“I like it.”

He put out his arm and watched the rain flush onto it. His silk shirt was drenched, from water, from blood.

“Smiling or the rain?” Dongju asked.

“The pain,” the man said. “Like the high of working out.”

“That high comes from the gain, doesn’t it?”

“Who says I’m not gaining something here?”

“Are you?”

The man looked back at Dongju and lifted his chin with a finger. His eyes were strong, intense.

“Do you think I am?”

Lightning shattered through the sky, and the dark red brightened for a moment.

“I think you’re wasting your time,” Dongju said cautiously.

“I think you misunderstand me,” the man said and graced his finger up Dongju’s jawline. He watched his index, interested in something else. “Are you sure that’s what I want?”

Dongju tugged away his face.

“Touching me like that, how can it not be?”

“It’s not you that I want.”

“Fine, my body. Even better.”

“Wrong,” he whispered and cupped Dongju’s cheek. “Let me help you.”

That soothing coolness returned. The rain on one side of his face burned, and on the other held by the man’s touch, washed down him like a spring shower. A wave of nostalgia rushed through him. He hadn’t felt this feeling since he was 18.

“Help me? Do you really expect me to believe that’s what you want to do?”

The man brought his other hand to Dongju’s face, and the pain was leached from his entire face. The man stayed silent, and instead started stroking his thumb on Dongju’s cheek. Dongju clenched his jaw. It felt nice. His hand was rough but something about it made it softer as it caressed him.

“If you wanted to help me, you would leave me alone.”

“I can hear your pulse,” he said, tracing his index down Dongju’s next and fingering a vein, and the relief spread down, leaving that side of his face raw. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

The man’s lips curled more, and Dongju realized that he was winning what he wanted to be, but what? His heart jerked with irritation, and the man brought down his eyes, moved his hand to his chest. The relief diffused within, and his heart answered with a quiver. The man looked as if that was exactly what he wanted.

“So what? Of course my body would react that way given the circumstances. I’m not in love with you or anything.”

The man laughed.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Whatever you’re thinking, I don’t want it.”

“Your heart says otherwise.” 

“Anyone who trusts a heart is naive.”

“Do you really believe that? Head over heart?” he whispered and pressed his hand firmly into Dongju’s chest. “Ignoring it will only lead to failure. When someone like you starts doubting the one thing they can trust, insanity starts to set in.”

“I don’t trust anything.”

“But especially me, right? You aren’t sure what to make of me yet.” The man raised his eyes, and they kindled with amusement. “It’s always fun when people are conflicted with themselves.”

“Fuck your magic.”

“That was my intuition. I can only hear your heart, not feel it.”

Dongju eye’s flattened. He was losing whatever game they were playing.

“You’re torn,” he said. “You were so fresh only a few months ago, yet here you are. I can’t even see the color of your skin anymore.” The same went for him. He was doused in red paint, and pink tissue pressed out of shriveling flesh. “That’s why we call it your birthday when you die. It’s like, for just a moment, you were a baby once again, terrified of a new world, innocent all over again. And then within two years, your humanity is crushed and you forget what it means to be human. Even the pain of acid rain ceases to bother you.”

Dongju froze. One word stuck out most. Die, and suddenly that feeling that he should be here returned and solidified more concretely.

“What?” he said.

The man raised an eyebrow, unsure of what he meant.

“I’ve never heard anyone call it that,” Dongju said.

“That’s because we just ask for your birthday. I guess you didn’t know then.” He laughed. “You’ve been telling them wrong this entire time?”

“This isn’t funny,” Dongju said, throat tightening. His intuition nagged at him and tried to tell him something, but Dongju didn’t want to know. “I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man’s smile fell. He stared for a long moment, processing the scene before him. He was confused for a moment, most likely wondering why Dongju was reacting so absurdly.

He was smart. He figured it out.

“Baby, do you know you’re dead?”

That thing his intuition was trying to tell him flushed out and enveloped him like a dark shadow. Dead… The word sank in subtly, but it went deep.

And then something broke inside him, the faint belief that he’d make it home. Oh, he thought, as the bubble around his mind popped. It didn’t feel off, what the man said, it felt right, but it also felt like a hammer had swung into his head and busted it open. It felt like an invisible barrier around him had been burst and like all the world’s struggles had been sewn into his body, tattooed permanently.

Then a question came to him, and he was hesitant to ask it, terrified of the response. He looked through the man’s eyes, the world out of focus.

“Where am I?” he whispered.

The man took a deep breath.

“Hell.”

Tears surged from him that moment. It was like every good emotion had been sucked out of him, it was like life had been pulled out. He threw his head down and a hand to his mouth. His sobs were breathy as he fought back the real cries. The man brought Dongju’s head back up, and his smile had returned to its rightful place.

“And who are you?” Dongju asked, trying to seem like he still had a head.

“Most people know me as 46. I’m the archdemon everyone either wants to kill or fuck. Maybe you’ve heard of me. Perhaps as arrogant, maybe as pretentious. Sexy or powerful... But not by name right?

It’s Gunhak.”

Dongju’s heart sank. He remembered the number. He remembered all the people who knew him, who feared him, who loved him. And now he knew his name just like that.

“And yours?”

“Dongju,” he quavered.

“Well Dongju, would you mind me kidnapping you?”

“What if I said I did?”

The man smiled and slid one arm around Dongju’s back, the other under his knees. He swept him up and looked him in the eye one last time with those piercing eyes of his.

“I’d say you were lying.”

Then he raised and started walking, carrying Dongju like a baby. Dongju set his head on the man’s chest, tears shaking out of him silently. He felt empty. The man’s hands were cold under him, and his arms were sewn of frozen flesh. The blood smeared across his body didn’t feel alive like blood should and in the darkness of the night, appeared black.

Dongju was cold. In the place where fires were supposed to reign over everything, he was cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would give u a spoiler for next chapter, but i literally nonstop rewrite so it'd probably be different by the time i uploaded it
> 
> thank you once again for reading, i hope it was an okay chapter. feedback is appreciated and if you spot a typo or something, u can always pop a comment below. thank you so much!!!


	3. Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lots of subtext in here haha
> 
> ty for reading <3

Dongju shook awake lying on a bed. He sucked in as the sharp pain of being hung for weeks suddenly stabbed through him, and his tired and wrenched-shut eyes cracked open reluctantly. Sleep begged to overtake him, but he fought for consciousness, denying the vulnerability sleep would bring. All sound was muted in the dull air as he stared ahead, back slightly posted up by a garden of crimson velvet pillows. There was an unnecessary amount of them atop the pool of blood he lay on, and the comforter of deep red spilled over the edges of the mattress hidden underneath; he was a ghost lying in the blood of his life, soaking in it as it poured away from his sun-drained flesh. Hell had drunk his essence far too long, and he lay a prisoner tied down by invisible chains.

From the canopy overhead waved down the sheer curtains like black smoke. They were tied around the four bed posts, leaving curly triangles as entrances into the plush grave. Blood coated the walls too, dark enough so that it wouldn’t sore the eye like a brighter red would, and the ornate moulding and elaborate trimming demonstrated a hunger for the prodigal and unnecessary. A fire crackled in the fireplace to his right, and shadows danced around corners, playing the game of imagination with him and winning. In front of the black marble fireplace sat a sofa and chairs, red on the black floor, and they wound in curls, the kind shaped in such a way, so high and mighty, that they looked like they might try to gossip. The desk in the left corner next to the other two doors faded into the blur of his peripherals as he stared ahead at the black doors of greed, stupendous in superciliousness.

Dongju was in shock. He wanted it to be a lie, but for once, everything made sense. Hell stole him down here by no accident. The chains dragged his wrists down tight, abrasive and for all of eternity with no hope of removing them. How could he remove something he couldn’t see? No matter how much he might try pulling the weights off his sore and torn limbs, he wouldn’t be able to; there was nothing to take hold of, to pull off, yet his hands went numb as if his circulation had been cut off. He was too weak to move; he was powerless.

How could this be possible? Wasn’t he a good person?

The doors ahead clicked open, and in came the man who went by 46, or more personally… Gunhak.

Gunhak was painted a slick red. Blood and other bodily fluids were doused over him, and his wet silk top licked his frame tightly, hinting at the toned body hidden underneath. A drop of water slid from his drenched hair and down his unbothered features. It got caught on the curl of his lip for just a moment before running down his chin and jumping off. Gunhak seemed to be in no pain, and if Dongju trusted his eyes, he was even enjoying himself. For that alone, Gunhak could be considered the most frightening person of all time, even more so than the him who was lighting people on fire all those months ago. There was only one thing more terrifying than a man who laughed at the pain of others, and that was a man who laughed at the pain of himself.

He carried a glass of water, which he set on the nightstand, and a bed sheet. He threw it over Dongju’s privates and sat at his foot. Dongju’s lower half leaned toward Gunhak from the sinking of the mattress.

“May I?” Gunhak said, and his voice was soft and nonintrusive.

He was asking if he could start healing. Dongju didn’t answer, but he was by no means against it. Gunhak placed a delicate hand on the one foot still there and the other on the cleaved leg. Dongju’s pain halted.

“Dongju, was it?”

Dongju didn’t respond. He was tired.

“You’re awfully silent now,” Gunhak said. “Would you prefer the quiet?”

Dongju shook his head faintly.

“I think I’m scared of my thoughts right now, honestly.”

“Scared?”

“Mhm,” Dongju mumbled. “I’ve never felt so… disgusting. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I would love to hear… if you wouldn’t mind trying.”

Dongju watched the man, unsure and hesitant. Should he tell him? They were just feelings, but he had this trepidation in telling Gunhak, like he’d be harmed. It had to have been Hell’s conditioning to expect the worse.

They were just feelings after all.

“It’s like… it hurts knowing that like…” Dongju had an abyss of emotions swirling inside him, and most were ones he’d never felt once in his entire life. It was like quantum physics suddenly; trying to make sense of them felt impossible. “I did something bad enough to…? And I can’t ever leave? I can’t do better?”

Even lying down, he felt wobbly.

“It’s like I’m… evil…” His voice trembled, and he took a deep breath to calm it. “I feel evil…”

“Do you think we’re all evil down here?”

Dongju started.

“What? No, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Is that a lie?” Gunhak asked. He moved a hand up the shin with the foot and moved down his hand on the new shin yet to have a foot.

It was a lie. Whether Dongju liked it or not, everyone seemed like a villain to him.

“I…” he began, but didn’t know where to go.

Gunhak laughed, not an ounce of distress in him. He was relaxed and smooth with his motions, too smooth. 

“Don’t worry. I don’t take offense... You were surprised when I told you, weren’t you…” He started thinking to himself, the way his eyes faded from reality for a single second. Then, he was back, looking Dongju in the eye. “You can’t believe it.”

Gunhak finished the legs, and Dongju wiggled his feet. They felt free.

The man repositioned himself by Dongju’s lower thighs, placed his hands on them.

“People would make jokes about Hell… I didn’t know they were real,” Dongju said, feeling stupid.

“But you know, usually when someone first wakes up, they know right away. Strange that you didn’t.”

“Is it?”

“I suppose there could be a few… variables… that could influence if one remembers or not.” Gunhak’s smirk cut sharper, in a way that was inexplicable, yet it was his eyes that were the most confusing. Were they slimmer? “Have you thought about faith recently?”

“Faith… Is that why I’m here? I didn’t have enough or something?”

“...Or something.” Gunhak gave a soft chuckle. “I’m going to tell you a little story, alright?”

Dongju nodded, unsure but willing to hear.

“When I was in high school, there was this kid who was really cocky. He was one of those people who gave off the impression that he thought he was better than everyone else, and the moment anyone tried to deny him, he’d get so mad. Sometimes, he’d get close to breaking a desk in his fit. No one could understand what was making him do it, and judging by your expression, you can’t either.”

Dongju’d unconsciously been twisting his face through the story. He suddenly reverted back to normal—fairly pained.

“It was fear,” Gunhak said. “We’re all scared of something, or at least have been at one point in our life. You’re an anxious one yourself, aren’t you? You haven’t fully relaxed once since getting here. Why’s that?”

“Because you could hurt me.”

“That’s right. I can do whatever I want to you.” The words came out slowly and tauntingly, and Gunhak’s eyes wandered down Dongju’s vulnerable frame. The man moved his hand up a slight bit, and his grip seemed tighter. “Your fear is doing its best to keep you safe. The body wants to remain unharmed, and the fear warns you when you might not be. In essence, it’s about a want for security and a reaction to keep that security.

The kid wanted to be something that he wasn’t, and the very thought of him not being that hurt. So his fear came to the rescue. What was hurting him had to vanish, but it was too far out of reach. He couldn’t stop being what he hated, but the harm had to stop. So he believed in a false reality, the pain too much to bare.”

_His fear made him believe in a false reality…?_ Dongju thought, confused.

“So he was lying to himself?” he said, still wondering about the previous words. “People do that all the time.”

“People do,” Gunhak agreed. “They fill in gaps, tell their own versions of experiences, spare others’ feelings… Spare their own feelings.

He knew to some extent. That’s why he got so angry, but some people believe so deeply in their omnipotence that they don’t know there’s anything else. Sometimes it’s obvious.” Gunhak’s eyes locked onto Dongju’s, and his smile had shortened ever so slightly. “But sometimes they’re a little more secretive about it.”

Dongju swallowed; the man’s eyes were suddenly colder, and harder to look at.

“But how can you believe something like that?” Dongju said, fidgeting.

“Have you not?”

“No?” Dongju said, but he wasn’t sure anymore. He was beginning to question himself.

“What do you think faith is?”

The man’s smile was back. All in a swift movement, he pushed his hands under the sheet and set his hands onto Dongju’s pelvis. Dongju clenched his fists, and his raw knuckles cracked open, wounds stinging like acid.

“Believe in a God, and just maybe he’ll spare you from Hell. Believe in a lie, and just maybe, your mind will spare you from the pain.

You were doing a lot better before you learned this was Hell, weren’t you.” A statement, but it came off more like an accusation.

Dongju blinked, and his frail frame felt pronounced. He didn’t know what he was feeling or why, but if Gunhak had a say, he might say the fear was warning him of danger.

“What.”

“Why?”

“I…” Dongju started weakly but stopped; he didn’t want to admit it, the fact that part of him hoped he’d wake up. But it was only a part. “I don’t get what you’re trying to say.”

“People are just simple enough to believe the fantasy that they’ve created.” The stress was beginning to penetrate Dongju’s mind as he started realizing. “When your own mind starts lying to you, who do you trust?”

“Trust…?” Dongju whispered.

“ _Dongju,_ ” Gunhak said. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t kno—” He thought about how perfect his life seemed when he was alive; was it all a fantasy? His eyes began to burn, tears trying to come, but he was too dehydrated for them to. “I could have been lying to myself?”

Gunhak lifted his hand, and the tension went with it. He lifted an eyebrow, slightly, as if for just a moment a vague sense of surprise cascaded through him, but then, it melted back down into amusement. Something was off about it now though. His eyes were narrower, engaged like in a playful patronization, and his smirk was sharper. He gave a confident laugh and took Dongju’s rugged hands in his.

“Of course not,” he said, and he scrunched his nose at Dongju coquettishly, just for a second. He was getting at something, but what? “It could always be intentional, isn’t that right?”

The phrase came off weird. It was expectant and taunting. It made Dongju feel like he’d done something wrong, like he was being called out. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Can someone know they’re lying to themselves... and still lie to themselves?” he said, the tiny bit of comfort he had seeping away.

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” Gunhak gave an amused pitying look. “Can someone understand the real truth of something and still believe in an alternate one?”

He released Dongju’s hands and pulled himself next to his upper body. Then he took hold of his sides, working on the deep gashes in them.

“I don’t know… I was kinda asking y—” Gunhak moved his hands up, and Dongju’s heart jerked. “You want me to answer.” He felt pressured; his eyes glanced at the thumbs curled over his abdomen, palms pressing into his sliced ribs; the man was like a shadow above him.

“I don’t know,” he finally said, though the obvious answer would’ve been ‘No.’

“Can someone believe in two opposing ideas?” Gunhak repeated.

“They could be open-minded…” Dongju’s eyes had yet to return to the man’s.

“Could they? Tell me, can you believe that the sky has any other color than the black it is now? When is it not black?”

Dongju hesitated. 

“...At day.” 

“Right. It becomes red. Could you tell me the sky is blue?” The Gunhak who was doing things out of sheer entertainment had slowly faded into the he who did it to deride. His voice was more lilting as he mocked for fun. “I know you’ve thought about how much you miss the sky you knew ten months ago. This one is rather… evil, isn’t it? You know it is. So could you tell me the red sky that haunts you so much is anything other than red?”

Dongju couldn’t, but he wanted Gunhak to be wrong.

“Some animals see different colors than we do.”

“Then the truth becomes that the receptors in the animal’s eye causes it to see one color and the receptors in your eye cause you to see red. You can deny and rationalize but that doesn’t change the truth. Can you believe in a blue sky when all there is is red?”

Dongju clenched his jaw.

“No.”

“Then answer me, baby. Was it intentional?” What did he mean by intentional? “Look at me.”

Dongju glanced up. He watched as the man progressed back into enjoyment, venom slicked on his grin.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dongju said, and it was almost a whimper.

“I want you to figure it out,” Gunhak said and pushed his hand up Dongju’s chest.

“How can someone intentionally lie—”

Gunhak cocked an eyebrow, and his smile burned.

“Seriously…?” Dongju said; his voice had gone weak.

“Hm?” Gunhak was waiting for him to finally say it.

“You think…”

“I think…?”

“You think I’m lying to you?”

Gunhak breathed in deeply, and as he sighed his amusement was replaced by a cold disinterest.

“I don’t like liars, sweetheart. I want to make it clear that I won’t put up with that behavior.”

Dongju was hurt.

“I’m not lying,” he said.

“Hm… And who do you think I’ll believe? Some slut begging for help or...?”

Dongju quivered as he breathed out. He wasn’t Dongju down here. He was just a slut.

“What have I lied to you about?”

“Don’t play innocent, baby. It’s what pretty boys like you do.”

“I’m not…” Dongju grew quiet. “I’m not like that…”

But he knew how he looked. Everyone would say the same.

Gunhak cupped Dongju’s cheeks.

“If there’s only one truth in any given moment, where is it now? Who holds it? Me or you?” Gunhak asked, smile returning.

“No... People are different,” Dongju begged quietly. “We can have our own truth.”

“And where did that belief get you?”

Dongju felt small.

“Answer me,” Gunhak said softly.

“I don’t _know_ how I got here,” Dongju said, a faint whine.

“But maybe, just maybe…”

“You already said I wasn’t lying to myself.”

“Does it matter what I say?”

Dongju’s breathing tremored.

“You don’t trust yourself. So tell me again who holds the truth,” Gunhak said.

A tear finally spilled down Dongju’s cheek. He started shaking his head, denying the man’s words.

“It doesn’t feel good, does it? Knowing you can say nothing, knowing that at the end of the day, your voice means nothing. That’s why we’re here. Because we had our own ways of thinking. God didn’t like it, so he sent us here, and we couldn’t argue against it. But of course we couldn’t. Fight against the most powerful being in all of existence? Lucifer tried; not even he could do it.”

“That isn’t true,” Dongju said, face morphing as the tears slowly pulling themselves down.

“Tell me how.”

“You’re twisting the story.”

Gunhak smiled.

“Look at you; it’s almost beautiful how much you represent Hell right now.”

Dongju choked on his disbelief, a tear racing down. 

“What?”

“Fighting for your own truth. Thinking for yourself. It’s what we do down here.”

“I’m not...”

Gunhak cocked an eyebrow once again, waiting for the words he wanted to hear.

“Stop hiding,” he said gently. “Let it consume you. No one will blame you down here. We have our own truth, our own power.”

“I don’t want that!” Dongju said on the verge of mental collapse. “I’m not like that, I don't think like that.”

“Who holds the truth?” Gunhak said calmly.

“God!”

“And what does God think of you?”

Dongju threw his hands to his head, rushed his fingernails across his skull. A cry broke out from him.

“But I’m not…” he wheezed. “I’m not bad. I thought I wasn’t bad, but apparently I’m bad.”

His eyes burned, dehydration cutting like acid, and the tears were barely there, but he was crying. His face wrenched, his voice quaked, and his body shook.

“How does the sky make you feel?”

“Trapped,” Dongju gasped.

“And who wouldn’t do anything to be free?”

Free? And what did freedom constitute? Making others suffer?

“You’re meaning to do this to me!” Dongju sobbed. The man had worked his control into his mind, and he didn’t have the power to fight against it.

“Is that what you think?”

“Stop it!” He shoved Gunhak’s hand off of him. “Why are you doing this?”

Gunhak tipped up Dongju’s chin, looked for his eyes whenever they shunned him. Finally, they made contact. The two of them stilled, Dongju quietly sobbing and Gunhak blithely smiling.

“In Hell, the whore cries wolf.”

Dongju shuddered and shut his mouth, biting back the sobs. Gunhak released his grip and without breaking their eye contact, grabbed the glass of water and raised it in front of Dongju’s face.

“Now drink,” he demanded.

Dongju shook as he took the cool crystal, and he hated it when he loved drinking from its rich body. Gunhak took it back when he was done, raised from the bed, and pointed to Dongju’s left. One of the doors cracked open.

“The bathroom's there. Go shower, baby. You don’t look like yourself.”

_I’m more than a whore_ , Dongju wanted to say.

He shoved himself up, and though his limbs were working functionally for the first time in a while, he felt even less like a human body than before. He felt like a toy. He took a deep breath, shoving back the urges to cry. Gunhak ran a hand through his hair, looking unbothered as he walked away. His mind was already somewhere else. Dongju scooted off the bed, taking the sheet with him as protection; he watched Gunhak as he approached the gargantuan doors in the center. As the man placed a hand on one of the knobs, Dongju spoke up.

“You think you’re a god,” he said, wrapping the delicate material around him.

Gunhak lifted a brow, turning to him. He was passive, disinterested.

“No, I think I’m a demon, and you, a manipulative slut who deserves to be put in their place. It’s funny you think I’d want to be such a thing.” He opened the door. “I’ll leave you out some pjs for when you’re done. I’m off to tend to my needs. As you can tell, I’m in a whole lot of pain. You can thank me in the morning, sweetie.”

“I’ll prove you wrong. I promise you.”

“Hm?” The trademarked smile came once more. “And what will your truth be?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, and into the black shadows of the hallway he went, the door severing their encounter in a boom that echoed in the quietude of night.


End file.
